I've heard that the harmony remotes are pretty good. I don't have one yet, but have been seriously considering one. I think it all depends on how much your willing to spend on a remote.
Harmony is "activity" driven. Meaning when you push DVD, your receiver comes on and goes to DVD, TV goes to the correct input, DVD player turns on and starts the movie, and i think your cable box is turned off. When you go to TV, the DVD player goes off, TV switches inputs, and receiver switches inputs (or off depending on the way you set it up).
This seems pretty sweet to me, however if i'm gaming, sometimes i listen to the radio instead of the game sound so i'll have to manually turn all that crap on or sort through the buttons and individually turn it all on.
I have a Harmony remote & both I and my family love it. They are great for turning everything on and off, but the idea that you can just throw all your individual remotes away is ill-advised, unless you only use the most basic of functions for your devices. What the Harmony remotes do best is allow you to forget all that Video-1, video-2, component-1,, s-video-3 crap. You press the button that describes what you want to do (such as "watch tv" or "watch a movie") and the Harmony sends a series of remote signals to your devices that set everything just as it should be. You set the remote by going through a menu of questions on-line (such as identifying what components you have by type, brand and model, and how all the equipment interacts), then the Harmony website will program your remote via a usb cable based on the information you provided. I've had mine about 2 years & they work like a charm.