Hands-on Experience
The form factor of a remote is one of the essentials for me, besides ease of use. The Philips RC9800i did catch dust on my desk because it is a tablet style device and is not usable to channel hop. This thing is for people who like to place the remote on the table and interact with it there. It looks cool, but it is not convenient. I also did not like the time consuming setup wizard, where you get asked to press several keys until the remote confirms the right remote codes. With the SRU9600 Philips changed all that. This remote is rather long, but it still lies good in my hand and I can lean back in my sofa and control my home theater universe. I was impressed how quickly I could setup my devices.

The SRU9600 uses a straight forward process to add a device. To configure my TV, I first select TV with the click wheel from the list. Next I choose the brand. The Philips SRU9600 has 1,100 brands in its database. I have tried it with a cheap Daewoo TV and the remote has this brand in its list. Now the remote tries to find the right device. For that I need to switch on the TV and then hold the OK button until the TV switches off. While I hold the OK button the remote cycles through available codes. I my case the TV switched off with the first code. I release the OK button and that was it. The remote is now able to control my TV with all functions.

One important tip is to think about which devices you use in sequence. you cannot change the order of the devices after you configured them on the click wheel. What I mean her is that you usually use your TV first and then the cable box. If you programmed your DVD player after the TV then you always have to scroll over the DVD component to reach the Cable Tuner.

Besides the Daewoo TV, I have a Panasonic digital DVD recorder, Sanyo PLV-Z4 projector, Yamaha YSP-1000 Sound projector and an old Denon Hi-Fi system. The 2 year old Panasonic PVR/DVD recorder worked from the Database as well as the Yamaha YSP-1000 and the old Denon. Only the Sanyo PLV-Z4 did not get recognized. For this one I had to learn the functions one by one. Philips calls this fixing keys. This works like with most universal remotes. You just place the remotes head to head and press the keys you want to learn on each remote in learning mode.

The backlit LCD display shows different layouts for the different components. The layouts are mostly appropriate and have in most case to pages you can toggle between. To activate the LCD display when it is in standby I have to touch it. I changed the backlight timeout from 3 to 10sec, because it bothered me while fast forward on my PVR. To stop I always had to 'double click'. First touch to activate the screen and second touch to push the stop button.

The click wheel interface works well for me. Scrolling through the devices is fast and comfortable. After a while I memorized the sequence of components and got faster selecting them.

Besides controlling individual components the SRU9600 also supports activities, which is a series of remote commands. This is useful if you want to push one button and switch on or off all components to watch a DVD on the projector.

Another convenient feature for some might be the copy volume function. This feature adjusts the volume of connected components to match the volume setting of the TV or Amplifier. I do not use it currently on my setup.