The Runco remote is medium sized, about the size of a DirecTV remote (for the 30 million or so people who have DirecTV, including me). The backlight is red and comes on when any button is touched. It's fairly bright, easy to read, and not blinding at all. Nicely done.
The remote is about source selection, menu navigation, User settings, and buttons with direct links to image controls.
From the top down, it plays out this way. Power and Standby (off) are on the top. Below that, five discreet buttons for the different sources. (Reconfigurable, in the menus). They are simply labeled 1 though 5, since you can change the sources.
Below that are the navigation controls in a round formation with an centered Enter button. Menu is below ot the left, and Aspect ratio to the right.
Below the LS-5's navigation, are three buttons across for the three User memories. The Runco confirms with you, before loading them (Load User Memory1 - OK or Cancel).
That brings us to the last nine buttons - three rows of three, all are image controls or features:
Contrast, Brightness, Sharpness, Gamma, On Screen, Noise Reduction, Picture In Picture, Picture in Picture Swap), and in the lower right, also a backlight button for the remote, even though pressing any button turns it on. (Nice!)