Thank you for the information. I understand your position and I can appreciate it. However, and I'm sure you have heard this quite a bit, I think your company might be missing out on a positive opportunity by holding the templates back from end users. As I understand your company and the MX 3000, the target market is the end user who will have a CI prepare/customize the remote for the end user (customer). In fact, given the completity of the remote and the recent plethora of remotes using the arguably easier (but nowhere near as good) internet programming approach (i.e. Harmony), the majority of end users who purchase the MX 3000 to program it themselves are likely to be diehard individuals who enjoy doing the programming, purchase it for that reason and are quite capable of doing the programming. These end users are not likely to seek programming from a CI. I would assume they are not your real target market nor are they a target market of CIs. I would assume the number of these type of end users is very small or otherwise econmics and company survival would dictate that you market directly to them. Thus, URC and CIs do not really lose anything by making the Alpha template open to the self-programming end users. In fact, by making it available to them you have availed it to the hands and minds of many more individuals who can inject their creativity into the template and acheive a whole other level of perfection with it. These individuals are likely to spend quite a bit time tweaking it and really exploring what can be done with it. They are not as pressured with the time limitations that CIs face since arguably CIs must move onto the next customer and efficiency is at least one important component to the bottom line. Arguably, these end users will end up creating showcases (just look at what this forum has done for custom remote templates) with what I assume URC believes is a very powerful and impressionistic template. I would think that these showcases would reflect favorably on URC and CIs would have the opportunity to see what others are doing. In otherwords, an open exchange of ideas fosters the development and marketing of the product even more. I would think that in the end that is a win-win-win situation for URC, CIs and the select few end users who are going to spend the time and effort to do their own customization. Based upon your comment "at least for the time being", it sounds like URC might be considering making the template open to end users. If so, I applaude URC for making this move and I would not be surprised if URC sees an improvment in sales in what I assume is becoming a much more competitive environment.

Thanks and hopefully we will all see Alpha sometime soon.