We recently got given a DVD drive (including multi-region playback and Blu-ray facilities) but it was missing a couple of things. One was a power lead but, thanks to my habit of hanging onto that kind of item, I was able to dig one out from my extensive collection of “I might need it one of these days” items.

The other was a remote control. You might think it sounds lazy to want such an item but unfortunately the player had limited built in controls – you can turn it on and off, open and close the disk tray and there are buttons for play and stop. That’s all well and good but not so helpful if you want to pause a movie or jump to a particular episode of a show.

I started searching for universal remote controls but, in the end, settled for a relatively inexpensive one specifically marked as compatible with the player unit (less than a tenner), which arrived this evening. So far, so good – the only thing I haven’t been able to control is the volume and I think that is because it is passed off to the screen the player is plugged into. Time to go and watch some more DVDs to check it out further.