The world of all-in-one remotes is moving fast, and these days a controller has to do rather more than change channels on your TV and press play on your DVD player. Oneforall, have taken up the challenge with their Xsight Touch device.  This nifty unit can control up to 18 devices, allows you to program 6 different profiles, each with its own set of favourite channels, and also provides the facility to set up custom activities, whereby you can perform actions on multiple devices with the same button click.

Sounds good... and happily, it did a good job of living up to its marketing spiel.
Taking it out of its packet, you get the controller handset, a rechargeable battery, a charging cradle, quick start guide (very quick!), a USB cable and a CD-Rom. At this point I should say that whilst you can get the device working without using the CD-Rom, you are only going to be able to use about 50% of the functionality – a computer (with an internet connection) is VITAL to get the best out of this device.

The display is touchscreen, and quite sensitive. Which is good right? Err, probably, but my first attempt to get it going hit a snag, and in the process I managed to abort the set-up program, leaving the handset displaying in Spanish – entirely my error, but be warned, it starts up as soon as you put the partially charged battery in, so remove the label from the screen before hand, otherwise who knows what buttons you’ve been pressing!

Having stumbled around the menus with guesswork, I got it back into English, and began setting up my devices. First up, a Sony Bravia LCD TV, a nice new device and I had no problems at all getting it connected using the handset menus. Next was the Virgin Media V+ box which is again a fairly new device, so also picked up first try, and both cable functions and V+ extras kicked in straight away. Now for a bit more of a challenge, I have an old DVD/VHS combo unit, and in the past I’ve only been able to get one or the other working on shared remotes, this time, success. Both halves of the unit were quickly and easily set-up, and apart from ‘eject’ all functions worked fine. (I am not surprised eject didn’t work, it doesn’t work from the manual button without a clout most of the time!)

From the handset that’s all you can do, so I moved over to the computer and fired up the CD-Rom. Autorun starts up, with a mini menu offering the choice of installing the software or viewing the PDF manual. I opted for the manual first, (the English version!) and whilst it was a good overview of what I had already done, it had only very basic information about what else I could do.
So, off to the software install. Quick and painless, this took me through to a website where it prompted me to create a new account. Hmm, seems like a bit of overkill for a remote control, but ok. I registered.

Next I followed the wizard to set up 3 custom activities:  Hello (all devices on), Good Night (all devices off) and Watch Cable (TV & Cable on, volume from TV, channels etc from Cable). It was all so simple! Now to set some favourites... Again the wizard guided me through very simply, and soon I had all my top channels listed for speedy access. There then followed a ten minute ‘testing’ phase as I turned everything on, off, on again, and flicked through all my favourite channels! Frustrating for the others in the room with me, but very cool!

Overall I’m really impressed with the device, it has a lot of potential, and for someone with surround sound system, hi-fi etc all linked in, I think it’s great. I love that it can be customised for different people, and the activities programming is a really useful idea that has been well implemented.

So why only 9/10?
It comes down to the ‘overkill’ mentioned earlier – whilst I’m perfectly happy with the idea of needing to use software to program the higher functions on the device, the need to register to a website in order to access said software, just seems a bit much. It works, very effectively, but I’m of the view that people shouldn’t be forced into giving their email address and other details out to a company, when there’s no overwhelming reason to.

RRP: £129.99, and available online from Amazon, and other good retailers.
See oneforall.com for more details