» Acoustic Research ARRU449 Universal Smart Remote Control

Acoustic Research ARRU449 Universal Smart Remote Control Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Universal Smart Remote
Comment: This product is great as long as you have a Linksys router to create a wireless internet network in your home so your remote can connect to the internet.

Only problem with this remote is you constantly have to recharge it too much. I guess sometimes I didn't have my charger plugged in correctly so it might just seem that way to me because it didn't recharge well enough, but the remote takes alot of power to run and ends up needing to be recharged every night or maybe once every 2 days.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: Very disappointing. Out of the box, the control could not handle 1) my cable box, 2) my audio processor, 3) my Blue Ray Disk player. Honestly, a complete waste of money for me.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: AR Rules in wifi remotes, move it over Logitech
Comment: Awesome,awesome and then some. Was a Harmony guy after hunting and hunting for the right one, thought I found it till I stumbled on this remote. I don't see Logitech going wifi and wifi really puts this over the top as far as I'm concerned. Weather,messaging,games geez it's beyond a smart remote it's more like a smart phone for your electronic devices.
Get it ,it's worth it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good remote
Comment: This is a good remote. Because of the wireless feature you can see the channel guide on it's screen. Easy to set up. Only flaw is that this is a rechargeable remote and if it dies you have to reset the thing. Not a big hassle but something you have to be aware of.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: I Expected So Much More...
Comment: I decided to buck the trend and skip the Harmony remotes for this one. All my friends have Harmony remotes, and they're fairly awesome. This one was $50 cheaper, and I was really enticed by the wifi aspect.

I've been sorely disappointed so far.

Setting up my TV took way more effort than it needed to be. Whereas the Harmony remotes are configured on the web, where they have a nice database of model numbers and pictures you can check with, the AR remote simply does what every other universal remote does -- it has a catalog of "codes", and you have to pick the one that appears to work. On the up side, these codes are automatically available on the remote, you don't have to keep entering codes, you just arrow left and right through the list, and then try out the buttons for each one. You also get to see what buttons are supported natively, so you when you're programming your cable remote, you can skip the versions that don't have the PVR functions your cable box has.

Unfortunately, there isn't any good explanation for what the buttons actually map to. I have a hi-def TV with five inputs, plus two antennas. The only button that showed on list was "input", and that button on the remote only switched between the two antennas. It was only after I gave up that I found out it could properly switch to the other inputs, but only as "soft buttons" (using the menu on the screen to choose those functions). Once I figured that out, it worked fine. But then I moved on to my cable box.

The cable box is a Motorola, from Comcast. There were only three options for "Comcast" cable boxes, and only one appeared to have the features matching mine. There are 13 Motorola matches, and a handful matched. Somehow, I don't know how, but the channel up/channel down buttons now skip channels 2 at a time. I can't channel up from channel 3 to channel 4, it goes from 3 to 5.

Of course, I only found that problem after I spent a boatload of time trying to figure out how to tell the remote *not* to scroll through the channel listings on its screen, but just let me try to channel up and channel down on my own (I'm a pro TV surfer). I never did figure out how to do that -- I "solved" it by simply telling the remote that I have no guide data.

I've also been stymied by the fact that there are no page up/page down buttons. For a modern universal remote, it seems crazy that there are no page up/page down buttons -- they exist on my regular cable remote, and I use them constantly. I could train the buttons, but I still have no physical buttons to map them to.

And I still haven't been able to get it to turn my XBox 360 on and off, even after supposedly "training" the power button. Since I use that as my DVD player, that's almost a deal killer right there.

Keep in mind, I'm a software engineer. I'm used to monkeying with devices like this, and I'm used to archaic user interfaces and such, so if I say I can't figure out how to get around the guide and simply channel up/down on the cable box, it means it's definitely not obvious.

I'm fairly disappointed. The wifi aspect is pretty cool, because being able to check out sports scores and such on the remote while I'm watching a movie. If I lived with someone, I could easily see the benefit of being able to surf the channel listings without interfering with someone else watching TV (or watching a movie, playing a game, etc).

But when it comes down to being able to really use the remote as an adequate substitute for my existing remotes, it's really falling flat. The lack of page up/down buttons is a serious oversight these days, and the automatic downloading and switching of "codes" is helpful, but it's just not the innovation offered by Harmony.

I'm going to play with it some more, see if I can't get it to work with the devices I have. I'd probably be considered a "power user", though, so my disappointment may be that it doesn't satisfy my niche uses. But for $200, I'd expect something much more akin to the Harmony remotes.

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