The s/w is actually pretty easy to figure out, it just can't compete with Harmony in that area ... so would generate a lot of support calls that URC would rather see be handled by 3rd parties or CI's.

The CI's, have their own requirements when accepting a product and as long as URC wants to be in that end of the business, they have to cater to the CI's or lose them to other companies that will.

For instance, my Pioneer Kuro KRP-600M was originally intended for CI's and other non-traditional sales channels. Too many consumers would be baffled by a TV that doesn't include a tuner, or speakers ... but in a high-end system you don't need that. However the KRP did include s/w calibration features that the pros demand. Once Pioneer abandoned the business and let the TVs hit the open market, suddenly they were selling for 1/2 the price they had been getting and were a great bargain. Now, I didn't have a problem finding a pro to come in and calibrate my TV, but you can bet he wouldn't have turned down an extra $3000 if he could have gotten it from selling me the TV too.

The problem is that when an artificial market is created, someone will look to exploit the demand. The more volume you ship, the better discount you get ... and the easiest way to increase volume in an artificial market is to lower your price and sell through unofficial channels. So there are CI's out there cheating other CI's who simply cannot price match because they can't achieve the same volume by selling at suggested retail.

Tech savvy end users are a legitimate market, and we should be looking for URC to introduce a remote targeted at us. NXG actually introduced a re-branded MX-850 in to the retail markets that included the s/w. Maybe the 850 is too old, but it doesn't look like they were able to sustain that model and they appear to have dropped remote controls from their product line. Still, in this day and age, I'd think there'd even be a market for an open source remote control where people could create their own firmware for it.