I still remember my first remote control; at least, the first one to come under my control. It belonged to my Mama Ruth and Papa Solly. It had two buttons, one for channel and one for volume. Both worked only in one direction, from bottom to top; the channels ran in an endless loop; the volume shut the TV off before it went back to soft.

They soon grew more sophisticated and numerous; now everything above a transistor radio comes with one, and coffee tables are littered with them.

Today, though, it's cool again to have only one remote control - one that combines the functions of all the others. People are willing to pay hundreds, if not thousands, for the privilege.

Near the lower end is the Philips Pronto Neo TSU 500, which retails for about $250. An example of the midrange is the TheaterTouch model T2 universal system controller from RTI, which goes for about $650. At the high end, there's something like the Crestron, whose hardware typically sells for about $7,500 at Goodwin's High End in Waltham, though as with the RTI, that's just a starting point.

The reason to get any one of them is to gain more control over your controls. My bachelor's coffee table has seven remotes, and even though I have them straight, it's hell when my mother comes to stay. Wouldn't it be great if there was just one?

On that score, the Pronto didn't score well. Despite several weeks of tinkering, I was unable to remove the need for even one of the others. Of the devices it could run, I couldn't get it to do all the functions I needed, never mind do all the functions.

It had spaces on the touch screen to run my satellite system, my DVD player, and my audio cassette player, but I don't have any of those. What about TiVo, or my second VCR, or my second CD player? What about the cable box? I tried to plug my needs into its memory slots, but it was too smart to be fooled like that.

It may be that its PC desktop programming function would have allowed me to add the functions I wanted, but I don't have a PC, I have a Mac. I might have tried to work around that, but it was unimpressive on basics: When I used the TV channel selector, for example, I could never get it to move forward or back only one station; it always wanted to go two or three.

As you should expect for better than twice the price, the RTI is a more impressive tool, sleeker and more substantial. It has a more extensive keypad and rechargeable batteries, and it shuts itself off to save power, though an internal switch brings it back to life when you pick it up. It sends an infrared signal, the same type as most low-end remotes, but can adapt to send radio-wave signals for devices made for that.

But I never got to push its buttons. Though the Pronto has six pages of various brands' remote-control codes that can be punched in to at least get you started, the T2's library of remotes is in its programming software, which is also PC-centric. Because it held out greater promise than the Pronto, I was willing to try, so I bundled up my remotes, the T2, and its 41-page manual and went off to use a PC at the office. The proc ess wasn't too bad; it took only about a half-hour. That is, it took me a half-hour to see that I wasn't going to be able to get anywhere. The first problem was I couldn't find my TV or any of my devices in its library; that would have meant starting from scratch for each one.

I had thought I could do it myself, and with patience and practice, I probably could have learned. But the smart way - the preferred way, according to RTI president John Demskie - is to have it programmed professionally. Dan Chadwick at Goodwin's High End said that would add $400 to $1,500 to the cost, depending on system complexity and other factors.

Of course, that's nothing compared with the Crestron, whose software typically would cost in the $5,000 range. It's nuts to pay that much, you say? I agree. The cumulative cost of my two-this and two-that system is under $3,000, and I'm not going to spend more than that for a remote control, even a really cool one.

But within the context of a home theater system, $12,000-plus for hardware and software isn't an outrageous sum, not when it would be all but impossible to coordinate all your very sophisticated equipment without it.

The Crestron doesn't run only the machines. It can be programmed to light the viewing room, or operate window shutters to keep the light out. You - well, your programmer - can set different scenes, for viewing, chatting, or whatever scenario you can envision. The one I saw modeled at Goodwin's High End wasn't set up to pop the corn, but it could have been.