I recently replaced my trusty Sherwood Newcastle P965 pre/pro for a newer Marantz receiver (which I love to death, but that's another story). The main shortcoming of the Marantz is the remote that comes with it - it's a learning remote, but it's basic and a pain to program.

My Sherwood came with a rebadged MX500 remote. I've never had a remote that I liked as much - it truly replaced every single remote in my theater. In pricing a new remote, it appears that in order to replace the MX500 with something noticeably better, I'm looking at around 300 bucks or more. Way more than I want to spend. None of the sub-100 dollar remotes seem to offer anything close. I MUST have customizable labels for a few buttons per device. That's my only absolute requirement.

I'm trying to sell the Sherwood pre/pro, but will likely not get much more than a couple hundred for it, and would not want to sell without the remote. If that's the case and I can't find a suitable remote replacement for the MX500 for less than 100 dollars, then I will probably just hand on the the whole thing in order to keep the remote.

Does anyone have any reasonable suggestions for replacements?

Sell the old rebadge mx500 with pre/pro and you just buy another rebadged mx500:


[Link: shop.remoteshoppe.com]

Hehe. I hadn't considered that option. Thank you for the suggestion. While I was doing my Sunday afternoon big box store rounds yesterday, I stumbled upon what seemed to be quite a deal. One store had a sale on the AR Xsight Color for 80 bucks, which is less than half the MSRP of the device. I figured I'd give it a shot, although many of the reports I've seen about it have been mixed. I had to take into account that not a lot of folks appeared to have tried it though.

I'm liking it so far and it does meet my needs. Two minor complaints about it so far: 1) ergonomically nowhere near as nice feeling as the MX500 and 2) the PC programming interface (my preferred method, although it can be programmed on device) is kinda slow.