Howdy,

I received my Pronto remote control this morning and figured I would share my initial impressions. It will take some time for the "new toy" factor to wear off enough for me to know if I really like actually using it, but I have a feeling I am going to love it. :) Just as a warning this is probably going to end up a little on the long side.

When I first opened the box, I was surprized by how compact it seemed. It is shorter than my other remote controls, and a little wider. It is about the size of my hand, minus the tip's of my fingers. I got over that pretty quick and was pleased to find batteries in the box as well as a 100 page (aprox) manual.

I was a little worried that the manual looked a little thin, but it described things in a way that made sense to me and I do not think there was anything very difficult about programming it anyway.

I put in the batteries and got a little worried when nothing showed up on the screen. I put the batteries in correctly :) and was still a little nervous when it did not show anything on the screen. That was when I found the contrast control and breathed a sigh of relief when the cool looking display became visible.

I am not really a manual reading kinda guy, I normally try to muddle through and end up wasting tons of time. This time was a little different, I had a couple of hours to kill before lunch so I actually read it.

After lunch I really sat down and started customizing the remote for my system. I decided to start with my Mitsubishi TV remote since that has the least number of features I wanted to duplicate. I set it up to do everything my tv remote could do and did not run into any real probelms at all. There were only 2 cases where I did not get exactly what I wanted, and both were very minor. I wanted one of the button's to be a little larger so I could fit more text to describe the PIP input selector, but that was no big deal. I also wanted to change the layout of one of the templates a little so I could my PIP channel changer going up and down instead of left to right.

I decided to tackle my yamaha receiver's remote next. I had a few minor problems with this one, but I don't think the Pronto had anything to do with it as this was just a classic case of operator error. :) The first thing I did was
assign a global defintion of the receiver's mute and volume controls to the physcical buttons. I tried it from the receiver's device panel and it worked great. I then switched to the TV's device panel to see if it was really global, and I discovered I was controlling the TV's volume. I assumed I had messed something up, and after a while I tried it under the VCR device panel and found I was contolling the receiver like I would expect. After I made that discovery I re-read that section of the manual and things were working just like they said. The global deffinitios can be over-ridden to work for a specific device
when that device's page is active. The TV setting's used the volume and mute, so there really was no problem, just some time spent chasing my tail. I can't even blame the manual as it was clearly stated, I just must have blinked when I read it. :)

I then proceded to program up the rest of the reciever's functions, I labeled and then learned most of the keys. When I went to test it about 1/2 of the button's did not work. I tracked it down to a problem with the way I was doing the learning, I would press and hold the key on my yamaha remote and then hit the key on the pronto I wanted to learn the function. That did not work out so well, when I re-did it I would press the key on the Pronto first and then the key on the yamaha. I did not have a single problem when I started doing it that way and the whole programing process started to get faster as I got into the
swing of things.

The next remote I programmed was my Sony VCR's. This one took a while because I spent quite a bit of time making sure I got the layout the way I wanted things. I knew from my past experiances with the Sony touch screen remote that I wanted
to avoid having the power or eject button close to the fast forward button. I was tired of turning of my VCR by accident with my "no look" fast forwarding. After I decided how I wanted to label the buttons, and which templates were going to get which buttons, the actual learning of the functions was a brease.

I have 2 of the exact same Sony VCR's so I was very happy to find the "copy device" capablity of the pronto. It saved me quite a bit of time since it made it so I did not have to re-type all my labels or re-setup which templates had which buttons. After the copy, and some quick learning, I had my 2nd VCR done with no problems.

Things went pretty well when I started in on my Sony DVD remote too. I spent quite a bit of time on this one, but only because I was being really picky with the layout and naming of each of the keys.

I spent about 5 hours getting things the way I want and am pretty happy with how things turned out. I am positive I could have done it much faster if I wanted too, but I was not really in any rush.


I have not spent much time actually using the remote to conrol my devices, but I am really impressed with what I have seen. I love the "feel" of the remote too, it fit's comfortably in my hand and I don't think I will have much trouble
using it one handed.

The Pronto has a very sturdy feel to it, though I don't know how fragile it really is. I hope I never know for sure, but it feels like it could take a real beating and survive.

I would also like to see the PC cable and software for creating and updating templates released. I was able to easily support all of the features of all of my remotes with the default templates, but there are a few that I would arange a little differently if I had the software.

There is one thing that I would like to do that I have not figured out how to do yet, so I figure I will ask and see if anyone knows. I was wondering if it was possible to assign the buttons for scrolling between device pannels to the 2 big
buttons at the bottom of the remote?

Take Care,

Will