|
...Continued from Page 3.
What you want - and what you need.
Before jumping right into learning codes, it would be a good idea to first customize the remote's buttons to your exact needs. With the UCommand it's possible to hide unused buttons, or select from one of several preset labels. It may take a bit of time to figure out exactly what you'll need where, but this process is well worth the added effort. To enter this mode, simply hold the device's button for three seconds. The remote will switch to a "confirmation" screen designed to help stop accidental configuration changes. Each of the four flashing squares must be pressed before the remote will continue on.
Press one of the LCD squares to begin customization. Each time that button is pressed its icon will change. For instance, one of the LCD buttons rotates through "hidden", "outline only", "LEFT", "REC", "TUNER" and an additional television icon whose meaning I can't quite decipher. Some of the squares have fewer options, and some are tied to other buttons - so when you configure the keypad's [2] button to show [CENTER UP], the button immediately below automatically changes to [CENTER DOWN]. The ability to customize labels provides an added edge to the UC-525's probability of meeting your exact needs, though I generally found that only one of the labels really made sense for a particular type of device.
You won't need a masters in gadgetology to program this!
It's not difficult to figure out how to further program the UC-525: the four setup buttons prominently displayed at the top are a dead giveaway. The first of these modes is "Learn" - teaching all functions from your original remotes. As with previous models, the UC-525 makes this procedure incredibly easy. Point the original remote towards the bottom of the UCommand, press the button to teach to, then hold the button to learn from until the remote beeps. Yes, that really is all there is to it!
And as if this procedure could be considered even remotely difficult or tedious, the UCommand still manages to go one better: it automatically steps to the next LCD square. So, if you've just finished teaching the [1] button, the remote automatically selects [2] and waits for you to send the next command. It'll even skip over buttons configured as unused. Talk about quick! This is the kind of logic that more remotes need. It may only work on LCD squares and not hard buttons, but that nevertheless counts for three-quarters of the buttons you'll be programming on this remote.
The UC-525 is capable of learning infrared frequencies ranging from 10kHz to 125kHz, which precludes only Bang and Olufsen, some Kenwood, and other exotic and, thankfully, rare devices. Signals capture extremely quickly, displaying an "OK" at the top of the screen when all is successful. 128 kilobytes of memory is included, more than enough to fill each of the 224 possible buttons with a command - which you just may have to do, since there's no way to "punch through" commands (automatically copying some buttons, typically volume or transport controls, from one device to another).
| 
Previous page
