Be Excellent To Each Other

So, one of my Mum's friends mum is in a bit of a bad shape.

She's living in a flat on her own at the minute, in a block of flats with lots of other old people. She's getting to be pretty senile, and gets confused really easily, and also has pretty bad eyesight.

Now, one of the few things she enjoys doing is watching TV, however, she really can't get her head round how to use two remotes, one for the freview box, and one for the telly.

To help her out, my Mum's friend bought her a giant "universal remote", with huge buttons, but she can't manage to use it, the fact that she has to press one button for TV controls and one for freeview controls really confuses her.

Since I am technical advisor for my Mum's friend, I have been asked to see if I could think of a solution, but I though perhaps you lot would have any ideas.

She's probably not got long left, and my Mum's friend said "I am more than happy to chuck money at this until is goes away".

First phase of my plan is that it would make more sense to just get a telly with built in freeview, since they would only use one remote, but I wasn't sure if there is maybe a better/simpler solution.

TLDR
Can you think of a way to have a freeview + telly set up that is as simple to use as possible, and maybe recomend a replacement remote control that is as simple as possible, and has big clear buttons.

If she's happy to chuck money at it, get her Sky. Then you just use the Sky remote for everything.

Except turning the TV on and off (unless you can understand that pushing 'TV' and 'SKY' toggles the controls between those for the TV and those for the Sky box). That throws a lot of people.

I've seen similar things to this large button remote in Curry's.

Buy a TV with built in Freeview?

Take the freeview box away.

That. Proper TV still exists doesn't it?

Depends on where you live.

There are plenty of Freeview boxes that can also control the volume and other things on the TV. My Pioneer can do this and that is about 7 years old.

Or just say "fuck it" and buy a new TV with a digital tuner.

Or like Lewie said in the opening post, you belmer.

I put it better.

Sony (I think) do a fully programmable remote (but small buttons), or you can get one of the better all-in-one remotes that include LEARNING... (I think they have one with some larger sized buttons, and fewer of them - should be able to find one of that style with learning built in)

That way, you can set each control up so that it auto-magically uses TV/freeview command as required (i.e. throw away the pre-sets & learn every button from the remote you want it). You can also leave out complicated buttons (like menu, ratio, etc) & tailor it so she gets 1 remote, enough to turn on/off, guide, volume, and numbers.

Otherwise - TVonics freeview stuff has a pretty nice controller generally, and that always uses TV-passthrough for volume control anyway.

Buy a new telly.

Shuffle up the street telling people how old you are, before falling and breaking your hip.

get a 360?

Buy an iPad, or as I whimsically like to call it *chortle* the iPhone Mondo. Or The Not iPad Nano. Or the iPod Nanna.