eldredge,
I was in exactly your quandry recently. I own the MX500, but wanted as user-friendly (read: Wife/Baby-sitter-friendly) device as possible. The allure of the touch-screens is in the customization of the interface. You can make them "self explanatory."
Whereas virtually every push-button remote I've seen must come with a little lesson on which buttons do what (although the touchscreens don't necessarily avoid this totally either).
I was thinking of spending some big bucks on a touchscreen, when I don't even particularly like touchscreen remotes for everyday use. You can program the MX500 to switch "Activities," but then you have to explain which buttons do what. And then, as with many remotes, people have to remember to go to a "Main" page to select devices etc. I just wanted a button for system on/off, and once it was on, I wanted to be able to access an activity directly from any other activity, WITHOUT toggling through pages or MAIN screens or directories.
Then I realized a simple way I could tweak the MX500 interface: Labels.
I borrowed a label maker, got some nice gold-on-black labels, and off I went. I programmed my MX500 "M1, M2,M3" buttons with the desired "Activities," (luckily I had just enough discrete codes to make them work reliably), and then I labeled each button (M1 swithes to TV mode, M2 is DVD mode, M3 switches to VCR mode).
I programmed the main POWER button to switch the system on or off (using the plain old toggle codes).
Then, I put a label on the BACK of the MX500 with simple instructions. This works even better than I dreamed. I've handed the MX500 to about a dozen people and simply said: "The instructions are on the back." They turn it over and see an instruction label reading:
- Press POWER to turn system On/Off
- Choose M1, M2, M3 for desired activity.
Then they look at the remote and see each "M" button with a label for: "TV" "DVD" "VCR."
That's it. Every single person, without a word from me, has been able to understand and operate my system within about 15 seconds.
Here are two pictures of my remote with the labels (sorry, kind of ugly flash pictures):
[Link: pbase.com]Click on the thumbnail pictures for a closer view.
Rich H.