Here's what they're saying...
Great for my mom, November 17, 2010 5.0 out of 5 stars
By Tiberius (NY) -My mom suffers from dementia. She is in an assisted living facility. Somehow her tv/cable was always getting messed up. We'd get calls from her saying that it said "weak or no signal". Sometimes we could sort things out over the phone. Sometimes the aides or custodian would be able to figure out the problem. Sometimes neither we nor they could figure it out and she'd have to go without TV until one of us got there to straighten it out for her. She's had the Flipper for two weeks and so far so good (the true test will be when one of the staff hits a button on the TV/cable box while cleaning...). Plus, my mom loves the Flipper. The buttons are large enough that she's not accidentally hitting more than one button at a time and if she's confused it's simple for me to tell her which button to press over the phone as there are only six buttons she can see and they're color coded. (I doubt she has the fine motor skill/strength in her fingers to open the sliding panel that covers the inner keypad; that's fine with us as we don't want her pressing extra buttons!) I'd suggest this to anyone with a family member in a similar situation. It's such a relief to know she can work her TV easily.
Purchased for limited sight elder, November 10, 2010 4.0 out of 5 stars
By V. Grosso "pookie" (NJ USA) -Purchased for 98 y.o. home bound with limited vision who found FIOS unusable. We were able to program her 8 favorite channels and she is happy. A bit difficult to program with much older TV, but with patience it was possible. The slide feature does not allow her to remove the programming, a problem with another product where we would visit and find the channels lost, Closed captioning in Spanish on the screen, etc.
User needs to be very patient when changing channels- takes a few seconds to move from one channel to the next. If you try to go too fast, you can end up outside the set channnels and it is difficult for the person with limited sight to return to the program set. we were so pleased with this that we purchased a second for her other TV.
Saved my sanity!, June 4, 2010 5.0 out of 5 stars
By Linda Margaret Hedges "Margaret's daughter" -After just a few weeks of the new Comcast remote, I was going crazy trying to get my 85 year old mother to learn how to use it. I thought "there must be something out there that is better". Her fingers did not work well, her eyesight was not good, and she just could not use the remote. Along came the FLIPPER. A life saver. I had a friend program it for me. Instructions were very easy, and in an hour we had her favorite channels programmed in. She now can turn the TV on and off, turn the sound up and down, and just push the large buttons to find a channel she likes! No more "I can't find my channel"! Thanks to the people who made the Flipper. It saved my sanity!
Best remote ever, April 30, 2010 5.0 out of 5 stars
By Good Daughter (Albany, NY USA) -Looking for a remote for my elderly mother, I found the Flipper. Unlike other reviewers, the only thing I did to set it up was put in the batteries! I did no programming at all. The Flipper immediately turned the TV and Motorola cable box on and off, as intended, and changed channels with the up and down buttons. Volume control also worked, although I used the original TV control to crank up the volume on the TV first, so that the Flipper would be able to work with a wider range of loud and soft volume control. It is also possible to open the sliding door and just punch in the desired channel number, including only one digit (e.g., 7, rather than 007) where the cable remote requires that you punch in all three digits on their remote. I did not program the channels, leaving my mother the option of tuning to any available channel. Having an easy-to-find mute button (which also worked perfectly with no effort) is the final element of perfection. What a great remote!!