I recommend that you take a look at Touchsquid. This is an app that runs on Touchsquid's proprietary tablet or a Samsung Tab 2, both of which have built-in IR blasters. You can buy the Samsung tab 2 7" for $200 - $250 online and the app costs $50. If you are a Pronto programmer, you will find it trivial to set up. I've been using it now for a month and am very pleased. That said, there is an active user forum in which users can make improvement suggestions. As a result, a major rewrite of the app is under way, and I expect that it will be a considerable improvement over the existing app which is already very good. For example, the macro-generating system, which is now a bit clunky, will be replaced by a sophisticated macro editor.

The biggest drawback is that there are no hard buttons, so everything gets done on the touch screen. Offsetting that is the ability to do email, Internet searches, email, etc. In fact you can put links to other apps on the Touchsquid screens. The tablets are general-purpose Android tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich.

I want to mention that Touchsquid's tech support is the best I've ever encountered. You get to communicate directly with the developers by phone, email, or on their forum, and the response is almost immediate.

Personally, I wish there were a separate Forum category on Remote Central that deals with tablet-based remotes. I presume that not enough people are interested to justify it, but having worked with dedicated remotes for many years, I've concluded that tablet-based apps are the way of the future. For less than $300, the Touchsquid/Samsung tablet does almost everything a $2500 Pronto TSU 9800 can do.

By the way, the Samsung Tab 2 comes with a remote control app at no extra cost, but it is very rudimentary and does not compare with Touchsquid.

The Vizio and Sony tblets have IR Blasters built-in and free remote control apps, but the apps aren't very good. Touchsquid says that neither Vizio or Sony will release their IR interface specs. If that changes, I assume Touchsquid will run on those devices as well.

The other apps that run on tablets like iRule, rely on the Internet for signal transmission and require the purchase of a device that converts a WiFi signal to IR. Although those devices cost only around $100, the biggest drawback to these apps is the delay encoutered between issuing a command from the tablet and issuing the IR signal which I find annoying. iRule, by the way, is an excellent app, but is more difficult to use to get full benefit. iRule appears to be orienting it to the professional installer market.