Monster Home Theater Controller 100

Pros: Easy set up, nice buttons, even my six year old can use it

Cons: Not much - remote assistant not of much use

Summary: I bought this remote to replace my old Sony Commander. My Sony worked OK, but basically drove everyone nuts but me. There was no way for my young son to use it, my wife put up with it, my in laws hated it.

Enter the Monster. I read the reviews of the Logitach Harmonys and decided to take a chance on Monster based on the mixed reviews of Harmony. I cannot tell you how happy I am with the decision. I own a Hitachi 50V500, Scientific Atlanta cable box with PVR, Sony reciever, XBox, and a Toshiba VCR/DVD combo.

The Monster software had all of these components working with correct audio outputs within 15 minutes of me answering questions using the software. The only adjustment I had to make was to customize the "page up" and "page down" inputs to the PVR for skipping through channels in the on screen menu 5 at a time. You can tell Monster made a bog investment in the software to input your components and establish functions.

The other thinh I love is that the Monster remote senses when my components are on or off. My Sony could never do this (or I could not figure out how) and constantly would shut components off when I used the memorized commands (for example it would shut off my reciever when I swtiched from watching to TV to watching a DVD). I knew how to get around this, but nobody else in my house did.

All in all a very positive experience with a product that I think is very hard to get correct. Congrats to Monster on a very high quality product.