Personally, I like the touchscreen interface. David asserted that touchscreens don't lend themselves to remote controls, which is true for people who prefer tactile feedback. As it turns out, however, most people don't ever learn the agility with their remotes that David has. The irony of this situation is that a lot of the real "power users" in the Universal Remotes world DO learn the skills that David speaks of, making the touchscreen LESS useful to the people who actually need its programability the most.

Let's face it: the PERFECT remote would work in many of the same ways as the Pronto, but the buttons you program into it would somehow be real, physical buttons that change as if they were on a touchscreen. Until materials technology exists to create such a device, I think we're all in for a huge compromise. For me, the Pronto is currently the best compromise, because I always end up looking at the controls on my remote, whether it's a touchscreen or not. The only thing I do without looking are functions that use a cursor control. Other people use their remotes in other ways, but for me, the only change I desperately want for the Pronto is to have a hard-button cursor control.

Oh and... if Philips wants to hire my company to design a CD full of CCF's, I'd be delighted to lend a hand!

(By the way... I've been covertly working on a new CCF that is specifically designed to make it VERY easy to create a task-based CCF using your own codes. It won't incorporate all of the special functions of your devices, but it will at least get you started with basic functions--without two or three weeks of programming lead time. It won't be much use to those who have already created their own CCF's, but it should make things MUCH easier for new Pronto owners to get started. I'll keep you posted, although things have been going slower than I'd like because I'm currently in the process of buying a new house and moving.)

Thanks,
Dale Crawford