I'm a lucky guy. Not only is my new wife a sweetheart, she's almost as avid a gadgeteer as I am. But that doesn't mean she wouldn't prefer to have fewer remote controls on the coffee table. We had eight at last count, though that includes the two or three for decommissioned devices.

Such clutter is why manufacturers continue to roll out universal remote controls. A decent one is Universal's Automator ($150). It boasts that it can replace up to 10 remotes, and my experience nearly approached that.

Adapting the Automator was for the most part as simple as advertised: Punch in codes from the owner's manual and that's it. Even my decidedly nonmainstream TV brand, Loewe, was in the manual.

That's why I was puzzled when Motorola, a far more common nameplate, wasn't among the cable-box brands. No problem, since the Automator can learn in the same way my dinosaur remote did: Simply point teacher at student and press the function you want to transfer twice, and that's supposed to be it. But that wasn't it; the Automator kept telling me the transfers failed.

There was another slight problem as well. The Automator was able to mimic the excellent TiVo remote except for a key I value very highly, the one that skips ahead 30 seconds. It may be there among the Automator's three-dozen-plus buttons, but I couldn't find it.

Despite these glitches, I would still welcome the Automator in my home. It did most of what it said it would do, and certainly would lower the coffee-table mountain to more spouse-accepted levels.