So, I just got my 1070, and I generally like it.

But when I had to explain the modal selection UI to my wife, I realized I may have made a mistake.

If you're not familiar with the unit (e.g. you're my wife, or my babysitter), it's completely impossible to tell how to switch from the DVD input to the satellite input:

"push this button marked input."
"nothing will happen. that's normal."
"then push this unmarked button over and over"
"stop pushing it when the word 'video1' appears"

The remote is just as bad:

"find the tiny button near the top marked 'tnr'."
"push it. nothing will happen. that's normal."
"find the tiny button marked 'dvd'."
"not the one on the top, the one on the bottom."
"push it"

I think I could avoid returning the 1070 if I could find a universal remote with two big buttons, "satellite" and "dvd".

Has anyone else encountered this problem? Have you solved it? I'd be happy to use the wired remote input, if I had something to produce the correct signals.

It seems crazy. If I can't make this work, I'll have to send the thing back, and get a worse-sounding, more-expensive, less-fully-featured unit with a better UI.

Help!

The key here is a more robust universal remote. My wife still says the MX-500 that I bought in 2003 was the best upgrade we ever bought for the home theater, although the MX-700 that I later upgraded to is also very popular. Either a Home Theater Master MX remote or a Harmony will allow you to make the system much easier for your wife to operate. A MX-500 may still be available for around $80, so it's not necessarily a drastic expense.

I have the Harmony and I think it's great. You just push the button labelled "Watch TV", "Watch a Movie" or "Listen to Music" among others, and it takes care of everything else.

The hard thing for my peoples is the projector needs to have time to boot up before you try to switch the input, and the remote will wait a certain amount of time and then send the command to switch the input - by then, my users have long since thrown it on the coffee table and lapse into a state of utter confusion, even though they have been told may times to keep it pointed at the projector until the green light goes out.

But that has nothing to do with the receiver - your problems should be quite simple compared tot hat one - as long as they point the correct end of the remote at the receiver

That'd be a good application for an RF-based remote so it'd pick up the command no matter what direction the remote's facing and feed an IR signal to the projector.