This is certainly a nice community. (If Philips ever reads this and brings out a better "Pronto2" I should seriously think of coming back!)
I wanted to point out just an irony: it was Dale's CCF which made me "see the light" about the programmability of the pronto, the bad ideas behind the original design, the lack of Philips commitment in the development aspect, etc. etc. etc. (I'm honored by your reply, Dale)
His CCF is a user interface proposal made "in spite of" and "not with the help of" the Pronto itself. I agree that rigid user interface guidelines are against the user's right to choose, but just the same as the total absence of rules normally leads to non-programmers confussion (that's an old battle in the user interface design history, isn't it, Dale?). Why not let the programmers do their job providing them with all the tools, documentation and support to offer turnkey solutions (a CD full of CCFs designed by people like Dale, for exmaple) to the rest of the world? Obviously: BEFORE marketing the thing and supporting it AFTER. What I really dislike is this compromise-like (i.e.: bad) solution that leads to frustration like mine to most owners of the Pronto.
About dealing with small and big companies: big companies have always been small sometime. This comunity is made out of "early adopters", as the marketing guys say, which shouldn't be so worried about that. Besides, if one of these days Philips finds its product no longer profitable, interesting or whatever, they will discontinue it without a word to you, that I'm sure of.
There might be no perfect remote, but I think that a community like this is large enough to be heard by the manufacturers about building the better one, or at least two or three models that will fit most tastes (there's no need for just "one", is it? :-) Do you think these companies out there are listening? The big ones? The small ones?...
Let me say something about companies arrogance in general: I've worked a short time for a small but international company that's sitting on the best product in its niche market and making all the wrong moves about the marketing. One of these days an even smaller company will eat them up by understanding just one thing: it's listening to customer demands what makes a product line succesful and grow. If Philips doesn't listen to this community, whoever does will kill the Pronto.
