Andrea, The party is just about over, but glad to have you drop in.

Like many others I have all that I need to keep my Pronto PRO's alive and happy. I have not tried PEP3 as all I intend to do is just maintenance and PEP2 is fine.

I really want to sit down with the Cocoa manuals and figure out how to program the iPad natively. I will get to it, probably after the summer. Right now I am too busy reading with my Kindle.

I have played with iRule on the iPad and modified my Theater PC to accept commands from the iPad. I had to make some minor changes as the Pronto is a two way device and the iPad/iRule currently is not. I sometimes send things back to the Pronto and had to work around that for the iPad. The iRule developers are going to release a 2-way version, but I have concerns as to how well it will perform. The Pronto did two-way communications so well because you had all of JavaScript, aka ProntoScript, available to process the response. In todays world a Pronto coupled to a Global Cache gateway instead of an RFX-xxx for RS232 and IR would be my choice of how to go. In My Theater the Theater control PC handles all IR using a Global Cache iTach, and all RS232 using a USB to RS232 8 port converter. I have seen such converters in 8 or 16 ports for under $100 on eBay.

I have rebuilt the theaters librarian so that it is a stand alone system and runs on a small asrock atom PC (~$320). It is in sleep state except when I start the theater at which times it gets a WOL. It is put to sleep when the Theater is shut down. In fact the main theater control PC is normally in sleep state and the Pronto sends a WOL when I power up the theater and then probes the PC to see when it is awake. Those interested in the Movie Librarian can check my website for some screenshots (bottom of the main page - www.the-gordons.net). The theater control PC uses the Librarian PC as if it were another component in the Theater communicating with it over TCP/IP. When I select what I want to watch the librarian sends the theater PC the needed information to start the Dune player whaich is already ready (out of standby). The movie starts in 7 second BR or DVD, with no previews, warnings, etc.

Getting back to iRule; it seems they have just negotiated a deal with an Australlian distributor covering Australia and New Zealand which appears to lock out the DIYer. IMHO that was not a smart move, at least the way they have done it. I think it will come back to bite them.

First of all the professional installer does not want to deal with the likes of us (DIYer's). We are a royal pain in the ass, always wanting changes and not wanting to pay for them. Secondly, Professional installers can gain a lot of insight and assistance from experienced DIYer's. Lastly I do not believe DIYer's are a threat to the Pro Installer. The markets are really different. An advanced DIYer will not use a pro installer if they can't get it, they will just use a different product.