Remote controls are terrific, of course, but if you happen to lose one or – more likely – have one stop working then their replacements are a racket. You would think that a universal remote would solve a bit of this, but I’ve never had more than passing success with them.
But I decided to give it a go, and there is why. I wanted to be able to play CDs through my good speakers but CD players are rare in shops these days. You can buy terribly cheap ghetto-blaster type units or really expensive hi-fi units, but nothing between. So I picked up a second-hand DVD player in a shop in Sydney Road and it plays CDs fine. Except that you can’t navigate between tracks. It just does eject, stop and play.
So I bought a cheap universal remote from K-Mart. With these, you type codes for the manufacturer and one of them will match the particular device. My player is a Sony, so there are about 15 codes. I tried them all.
With three of the codes, I could start and stop the disc, but not jump forwards or backwards. So I tried them all again. Still no luck, but it only cost $13 so that’s not the end of the world. Then I noticed that there was a code for the Song Playstation. With nothing to lose, I tried that. And that was the code that worked.
All’s well that ends well, I guess.
The back button for our Samsing telly has stopped working, too. We don’t use it much since we watch almost everything through the Chromecast. But I thought I’d try the code for this one on the same universal remote.
Got it first try.