For many years we've been watching Dish Network on a 70" Sharp Aquos Quattron TV, with sound routed into Yamaha HTR-6230 5-channel theater sound amp. Everything is/WAS controlled by the Dish remote, never had to touch the Sharp or Yamaha remotes. For Xmas I picked up an 85" Samsung 7000 UHD TV. Last weekend we finally got the TV's swapped out.

Some big differences between then and now- The old Sharp had like SIX HDMI plugs, optical plug, and a wall of jacks for basic stereo and component input/outputs. The new Samsung has all of 3 HDMI plugs, a coax plug and an optical cable plug.

The new TV has a bazillion features the old TV didn't have, I do have the Dish remote programmed to run the TV's 'basics', but accessing the higher-end features requires the TV's remote. That's no problem..

What IS a problem, is that once the optical cable is connected and the Yamaha amp is chosen for sound, the TV speakers go dead, great, but the problem is, the TV's volume control ALSO goes dead- as in, with the TV in 'Yamaha' mode, the TV's volume control is disabled---when I try to control the volume, the TV shows an "Optical Output" notice instead of the TV's volume levels, meaning the TV's volume control is DEAD. There's no way to control the volume via TV remote... Who at Samsung thought THAT was a good idea? So instead of ONE remote that used to do everything, in addition to needing to use the TV's remote to access the higher functions, I ALSO had to clean the dust off the Yamaha remote just we can adjust the volume now. THREE remotes needed... banghead.gif

So, does anyone know of, or use, a good universal remote, where I could at least get it to control the volume AND the basic TV at the same time?