I'll be brutally frank; all the universal remote controls I've tried – the ones that promise to replace all your current remotes, leaving just one for the family to fight over – have over-promised and under-delivered. To the point where I seriously recommend the alternative to anyone who will listen; having separate remotes for everything cluttering up the coffee table. Separate remotes make it much easier when someone asks for directions on how to do stuff. The remote with the same brand as the television controls the picture, the one with the amplifier's brand controls the sound and the one for the Apple TV is the little aluminium one that has doubtless slipped down between the sofa cushions again.

Otherwise one has to explain how to toggle between functions on the universal remote, and then figure out which button does what in that particular mode. When a family member is phoning me because the sound doesn't work and I'm three-quarters asleep in Boise Idaho, it all gets a bit challenging.

By trying to be all things to all devices universal remotes keep falling short, and because home theatre set-ups vary they fall short in many and often unpredictable ways. The biggest frustration I have is trying to get macros to work. A macro is a chain of commands you tailor to your system, so that with one keystroke the whole shooting match will fire up to give you the 7pm news, or the DVD, or the Friday Night Footy or whatever. Sounds brilliant. Complications arise when, say, the amplifier has to be turned on and then told to go to the second HDMI input, the problem being that my amp takes 10 seconds to boot up during which time it will not accept commands. Like being told to go to HDMI two. There are some remotes where a time delay can be dialled in between commands but try explaining to a non-techo why one must keep pointing the remote at the equipment stack for at least 10 seconds after pressing this particular button.

And there are times when someone has left something turned on and the macro, in its innocence, operates the on/off switch and turns that device off instead of on, and a few minutes later, when nothing is working and my phone is engaged, a certain impatient person starts pressing every button and winds up watching vision from Iceland while listening to Abba Gold on repeat.

And so my coffee table is crowded with remotes and I wear it like a badge. But this week I saw some after-market remotes that are a really good idea. They are not universal remotes, they are replacement remotes; the remotes you buy to replace the remote that came with product and has now gone to a better place, be it through misadventure, overuse or being stuffed with knock-off batteries bought cheap at a street market that have leaked and corroded the insides.

Simple replacement remotes can be found in supermarkets and range from devices that handle oft-used functions only, like volume, channel up and down, on/off and mute, to devices that carry codes for just about every television/soundbar/sound system ever made and, after setting up (read the directions and budget 10 or 15 minutes) work very well. But the ones that caught my eye are a step up from these and deserve points for ingenuity. They're made by One For All, an established and reliable brand in remotes.

Say you have a Samsung television and the remote has just gone to the recyclers, having been left in the box last night's pizza arrived in; One For All now provides a remote with a similar key layout to your original, so when you hit the channel-up button where you've always hit it, it will change channels rather than do something confusing. And there are remotes set up for televisions from LG, Sony and Panasonic as well. All that's different is the brand name at the bottom. And there's a learning function if you want to tailor functions to your own needs.

They cost $70. You probably won't find them in supermarkets, look in good hi-fi and home theatre shops.