learning universal remote for stereo system

Hi,
Sorry if this sounds dumb, but what is a universal remote? Is it something that can play everythingandanybrand.That sounds useful. But 10K is a lot. I'd like to know more.
Purnendu

Yup, they are very useful if you have too many brands in your system. You usually end up with too many remote controls. One of these will learn the functions of all your remotes and will control all your equipments. Very useful indeed.
Here is a link to the Logitech harmony.
http://www.logitech....=2084,CONTENTID=8747

You get the "made in China" ones right from Rs.150 onwards, and to my surprise, one of them has actually been working quite well with my neighbour's TV/DVD Player/Sat receiver setup from the last two years.

By that token, I think, you should be able to get a decent grey-market universal remote for Rs.1500/-. However, the disadvantage would be that it would not substitute for all the functions of your original remote.

Well I use a Zenith Learning remote which I bought in Dubai about 5 years back. Has worked fine with all my gear there and even today with all my new gear.

It would be very rare for it not to substitute a particular function on a particular product. Since these remotes "learn" (you point your original remote to this remote and "teach it), they I assume can pick up all the functions.

For most products, you only need to do feed pre-programmed code (for e.g. I fed code 972 via its numeric pad and my Philips DVD player is fully controlled). It has a long list of these codes in its instruction manual. For those which aren't listed, you need to "teach" the remote. I did this for my Rotel amp a few days ago and all functions are controlled. But yes for the myriad commands you have on the HT/AVR's, you may need to assign numbers for functions which though would work but would be tedious.

One drawback I noticed (at least in my remote) was that there is a sort of delay that is required in between pressing buttons - alomost a full second.

Thanks guys for the feedback. I am still searching for a decent one in Bangalore. Will keep you posted.