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...Continued from Page 5.
As described earlier, accessing the Macro Menu during normal use is accomplished by pressing the small "M" icon placed at the top left of the screen. Several shortcoming are that macros will not change the remote’s current device – for instance, no matter what page the macro is saved on you will always remain on the Macro Menu when it has completed running. In addition, it is impossible to add a macro to a device button, so that each time you select that device certain commands are transmitted. You also cannot add a macro to any normal device buttons.
Time and time again.
A feature many users look for in a remote control are "timers", which allow the remote to perform certain functions, unattended. at specific times of day. The UC-616 allows you to customize up to 12 timers with enough options to put a VCR to shame. They can run daily, once a week, every weekday, every weekend, every day except Sunday, or on a specific month and day. Each timer can point to a single button or macro, have a customized label and be temporarily disabled without impacting the rest of its configuration. After the timer has been programmed you can also view which button the timer points to by selecting the "View" option.
The remote is so easy to operate that anyone should be able to pick it up – and click. Screens change quite quickly for an LCD-based device, though the delay between repeated button presses is somewhat longer than on the UC-515. I found it possible to hold the remote and reach every hard button and all corners of the LCD screen with a single hand. Infrared signal strength is a little disappointing – I’m normally able to point a remote anywhere in the room and get a reliable response, but with the UC-616 it was necessary to aim more carefully. Though it passed my quintessential MTBF-1 (Menacing Thick Fluffy Blanket Level 1) test, it had serious difficulties with Level 2. Still, its performance is equal to or better than that of most original equipment remotes.
Can’t get there from here.
One sticky point is how to reactivate the LCD panel and backlight. Oddly enough, touching the panel will not turn the remote on: you must press one of the hard buttons. The problem is that no hard button is dedicated to this purpose. So, you need to press either a device button – which will also send out the command attached to it – or the [MENU] button. If the LCD is already on, pressing [MENU] will activate the backlight in dark enough rooms, but it will also take you from the current device back to the Main Menu. If the LCD is off, [MENU] simply wakes the remote up – but the backlight will only come on the second time you hit a button. The first press activates the LCD, the second switches the backlight on. It’s a bit of a problem that could have been easily solved with a dedicated [LIGHT] button.
The beep tone is only customizable between "on" (loud) and "off" – I would have enjoyed an additional option for "discreet" audible feedback. Each LCD button reverses when you press it – macros stay reversed as long as they run and can be stopped by pressing the [MENU] button. The single text size is easy to read from a distance and provides a 10 character label for the common 3 by 2 unit button size. Even the smallest button size is easy to hit with large fingers. If the screen’s calibration somehow gets out of whack, the remote does provide a special setup screen to fix it.
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