Control all your devices in one place
Written: Mar 07 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Controls many devices with nearly all features needed, great battery life.
Cons: Pretty lengthy
The Bottom Line: If you have a ton of remotes for many devices and waste a lot of batteries, take a look at this one.
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| gueeds's Full Review: Audiovox JR500 Remote Control |
When I bought my open-box bookshelf stereo system that lacked a remote, I asked the salesman for a remote. He showed me the Jensen JR-500. I have had many universal remotes in the past but none as feature rich as this one.
It has a silver metallic shine on the front, but the back and sides are dull silver. It still looks better then most plain black remotes. This remote has a good shape to it that fits well in my hands. However, that makes my hand to tend to hold on to the bottom, making the upper set of buttons out of reach, and making me have to juggle the remote so my fingers can reach the top. Small complaint, but for the amount of compatibility, its worth it. This remote has taken a beating, but it still holds shape. I have managed to separate the top and bottom pieces of plastic from the controller by accidentally dropping it, but it snaps right back together and is good as new. I have tried pulling on it now to try to separate it but it still stays together.
My universal remotes in the past have suffered from such things as not being compatible with the features of the device and not having a code that will work with the device. This one changed everything. This has TONS of codes so it should be no problem with device compatibility. For a complete list of codes for this particular remote head over to http://www.jensenremotes.com/jr500.asp. Good thing they have a website with those codes for all those people who tend to lose the codebooks. Programming the remote is not a problem at all. You turn on the device, press the button of the device, then hold the 'setup' button till the red LED lights up, then you enter the 4-digit code for the device from the code book or website and press power, if the device turns off you're done.
The Jensen JR-500 has the ability to control 5 devices at one time. These include: TV, Cable or Satellite, Audio system, VCR player, and a DVD player. When I first got this, I imputed all the codes for my devices; the remote controls ALL of them, including my stereo system. I never thought my stereo would have compatible codes with my stereo, but this one quickly changed my mind. On my other universal remotes, they would not have compatible buttons with my Echostar satellite system. Not anymore. I have never had to use my old Echostar remote for anything. This handled it all.
Speaking of buttons, this one has a ton of them as you can see from the picture. Here is a list of them: power, sleep timer, favorite channel (not sure what that does yet), scan (flip through channels slowly), TV/VCR switch (to switch between channels and auxiliary video sources), channel up and down, volume up and down, fast forward and rewind, play, pause, stop, mute, record, last channel, guide, exit, info, menu, left right up down, select, #'s 0-9, setup, enter, and the 5 device buttons. That has pretty much everything you could need a remote to do. The buttons seem pretty well constructed as they do not seem to have taken any visible wear from repetitive use. However, a few of the device buttons are starting to lose their print that says which one they are. Could be because I use this a lot or because the print is smaller and is more prone to fading.
The battery life on this thing is excellent. It takes two AA batteries. I have used this heavily over the past year or so on some Duracell Extras and the charge bar on the batteries still show about 90-85% charge. The battery compartment seems reliable. It is a snap shut that you pull at the top. It kept the batteries in and protected even when I dropped this thing.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
gueeds
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Location: Toledo, Ohio
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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