My brother wants a good PS2 remote for Christmas. He said one that will zoom and do other cool things. Anyone have a recommendations? Will a Universal remore work with the PS2, I don't ever remember seeing PS2 codes for other remotes that I have bought for myself. Please help!

You have to buy the official remote. It also offers updated drivers for the DVD player which make the quality better.

I agree with Gallant Pig. Get the official Sony remote. The others are cheaply made. The sony one comes with updated DVD drivers that add new features and improve playback. The only drawback is the new drivers must be stored on a memory card(it used roughly 2mb of space too!) but you can always erase them and reinstall them if you need the space for save games.

i agree, the real one is the one to get although i think ergonomically, its not the greatest.

yes, you can use a universal remote - program it for a sony dvd player

Not always true. You don't need to store the drivers on the memory card IF you have the new PS2. You will find the model number of the PS2 to be 300001R instead of 300001. If it ends with a "R", then you don't need the memory card.

Hmm that's bizarre. I bought my PS2 in mid november 2001 and the model number is 35001, Not 30001 or 30001R. I bought the GT3 Racing pack so I wonder if that had something to do with it. In any case, my DVD Player is version 1.30 and it doesn't support some of the features of 2.1(time display, multiple scan speeds). I don't really use my PS2 much as a DVD player anyway though(I have one on my computer and a standalone player) so it's no big deal.

It is bizarre... Sony is such a good marketing company, and you wonder why didn't they think ahead about the remote control drivers. And I always wonder why didn't Sony use their Memory Stick for PS2...

Thanks for your help fellas. I'm going to try and pick one up at Virgin with my new AMEX blue.

But doesn't the stupid official one take up a controller slot?

All of them take up a controller slot.... How else would they work.

yeah but the sony brand remote doesn't have pass-through, a lot of the other one's do.

I have a Pelican remote I got at the PS2 launch. It has a pass-through and is comfortable in your hand. It works OK, but given a choice, I would have gone with the Sony remote as well. If you realy needed pass-through, it might make a good alternative.
And by the way, I tried programming my Zeineth universal remote, and have also tried using my Sony DVD player remote with my PS2 -- neither work.

Did you try using your Sony remote after having the driver upgrade? With the new driver upgrade, I can use my standalone Sony DVD remote on my PS2, as well as my PS2 Sony remote on my standalone. Sony used the same signal codes.

Personally I'd rather take the full featured sony remote with the addition of new features over a third party remote. The Sony remote is the best on the market by far.