I'm currently the pretty darn pleased owner of both an HTM MX500 and a URC-9910. As a fairly geeky person who has spent the time to get familiarized with his setup, these remotes work really well for me.

My family, on the other hand, is ... significantly less gifted in the geek arena, and unfortunately are relying on me to save them.

Their 'home theater' (forgive me for insulting the term) consists of a satellite receiver, projector, and audio receiver (the latter is used only for the audio portion of the presentation -- the satellite receiver is connected directly to the projector for picture).

Right now, they're suffering from the standard bane of unintegrated remotes -- use this remote to turn the projector on, use this remote to turn the receiver on and change volume, and use this remote to change channels.

Any of my remotes would do this job very very well, but the last time my parents looked at my URC-9910 their eyes rolled up into their head, their faces glazed over, and they started chanting "I'm too stupid to use this remote." I'm only taking _slight_ dramatic license here.

So I need a relatively simple, yet powerful remote that will let me:
A) do a macro so I can turn on both receiver and projector at once (and turn them off at once; I'm assuming they've got discrete power, but if we just toggle that's OK too);
B) Let me change channel on the satellite receiver; and
C) change volume on the audio receiver without 'switching devices'.

Any suggestions? Oh, and just to make this extra-interesting, since there's probably about a 50% chance they'll abandon any technical solution I give them, I'd like to minimize my potential losses and probably not spend more than about $50-$70 on this remote.

Give the Sony vl700 & 900 a try.