Monster Remote

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to control all of your separate home theater and stereo equipment components with one giant remote? That is the concept behind universal remotes in general, but as anyone who has ever tried to use one knows, most of the time what happens is, you keep all your old remotes and add the universal one to the pile. Monster’s Home Theater Controller 100 universal remote runs on a modified version of Logitech’s highly regarded Harmony software and comes with a well-designed button layout and a rechargeable battery with a docking station.

The remote is supposed to support multi-room set-ups, a great feature for home theater fans, but in practice setting up multi-room functionality can be quite frustrating as you go from room to room testing and retesting your settings until you get them all correct. Theoretically, it can be done. With a retail price tag of $350, it would be nice if it could be done a little more easily. For $600 you can add lighting to the remote settings, and spend an entire weekend pointing at electronic things and saying bad words.