JP1 Remotes

greetings...first the preliminaries

1. Device: Toshiba 57HX83
2. Type of device: TV
3. Remote model: URC-8811
4. JP1 user? YES
5. Still have original remote? YES
6. Checked Yahoo file section? YES
7. Checked Pronto file section (at R/C)? YES

i am hoping someone knows how to deal with a toshiba "feature" that has been driving me crazy and hurting my macros.

i would like an easy/efficient way to turn on/off the tv speakers, for example, when i want to use my surround sound reciever rather than
the tv speakers.

the TV mute function automatically calls up closed captions. this "feature" can't be turned off. but it's not so bad as i can permanently select CC4 which i have
never seen used. but this is not good enough because the word "MUTE" stays on the screen. the only way to get it off is to unmute. what the
hell were they thinking (or not).

there is an EFC (233) to pull up an audo menu, but to get to the speakers item i have to navigate:
Audio.menu, down, down, right
this is what i currently do (4 strokes) but it is painful and expensive. its a toggle but that is ok.

does anyone know of a better way to turn the tv speakers on and off on toshibas? what do other toshiba tv folks do?
i would imagine this is a common problem for toshiba tv owners with universal remotes.

any help appreciated...thanks/phil

I have the volume turned all the way down as I have the sound running through my stereo receiver. I never use the TV volume.

A bit drastic maybe, but I disconnected the internal speakers, and always use my external amps.

i like to use the tv speakers for casual watching so turning the speakers
on/off from the remote is prefered to a hard disconnect. there are even
switches on the back of the tv, one i think is to use tv as center channel for surroound (not recommended, throws off surround balance etc.) but
none of these solutions is what i really want. it seemes such a simple thing
that toshiba would understand people might want to chose between TV sound and surround system sound from their armchairs...but there are
other more glaring foulups in the menus so it just may be that they are consistent .
thanks for responses, still hoping for a magic bullet.
phil

ps. i see marketing slicks that praise the "closed caption" on mute but
without the ability to turn stuff like that off, if you think about it, it
probably gets in the way far more than not ("CC off" does not apply to mute). the real pain is "MUTE" on the
screen...terrible.

pps. before i discovered the speaker on/off menu navigation thing, i even
made a LKP for turning down TV volume. discovered a few new swear words in the process

Toshiba was the very last company to discover the need for discrete codes, so it's not in the least surprising that they would leave something like this hanging out there.

My recommendation is that you give up using the TV speakers all together and just use the stereo speakers.