wow, this took a left turn.
Zero Hero - on life without remote controls: My daughter once managed to set my DVR remote to a different frequency, which involved pressing and holding about 3 buttons simultaneously. We thought it had been destroyed utterly until I went through the 140pg manual and found out what she had done. It turns out that there is a setting to allow multiple DVRs in the same room to be operated independently via different remotes, which means they have to be set to different channels much like 360 controllers. When my wife and I realized this, we seriously considered executing her on the spot before she grew up to conquer the world like Fu Manchu.