Professional home theaters can look very fancy, but most of the audio and video equipment is available to anyone. What makes the professional set up stand out is whats controlling the audio equipment. Almost all professional home theater setup have one important thing in common. They all have a similar touch screen remote that they come with. This remote can be set up to control just about anything that you desire or are willing to pay for. Many of us end up using 3 or more remotes just to get a movie playing. Imagine being able to press play and nothing more. You'd be surprised at how many things go into automation just by pressing one button.

Many automation remotes for home theaters are completely programable, so you can have a home screen that has buttons you actually want. A button that is meant for turning on the television can turn the television set on and make sure that it is set up for cable, turn on the cable box, and even turn on a separate audio system if you like to hear all of your audio through the home theater. There are a lot of steps that the remote takes care of for you. The best part about the automation is that it takes all the steps to make sure that it does what you want. For example, you can be watching cable television and push play for a DVD. The remote will change the television setting to DVD, turn on the DVD player and set up the audio equipment. It doesn't matter what you are doing, the remote sets all the settings correctly. This is some of the most basic functions that it is capable of.

Advanced features include being able to dim the lights and close the blinds to set the mood. You can even have a fireplace light up if you would like. There are ways to to almost anything to create the atmostphere that you want. The remote is just programmed to walk through the steps that you set it to.

This automation concept has spread further than just home theater too. You can have out side lights controlled or you can even have your spa heat up with the touch of a button. That is why you usually have this sort of thing set up by professionals. The set up gets very complicated and you could easily mess it up on your own. Just use your imagination and do a little research to see what other people are automating via remote control in their homes. The sky is the limit.