First off, I am an exprienced home end user, having used nearly every Philips Prontos in the past, tried the Logitech line (junk), tried the Philips 9800i (wow... REALLY junk.) Now I've decided my wife would be happier with hard buttons, but of course I want control.

All of my components are line of sight, so I don't really need or care about RF for this use. I *DO* run a 2Tb Media Center Windows Vista machine as my movies jukebox so I'd like to have some programmable buttons to use for Media Center as needed. Otherwise pretty standard stuff, Samsung 1080p DLP, THX cert HDMI switching Yamaha, Xbox 360, HD PVR. That's it. No DVD player as I rip everything down to the HTPC.

I'm fine with spending 950 money, but I'm trying to decide which of the 950 or the 850 makes sense and what the difference between them really is.

I don't need multi-room either, I'll probably just buy another one for my gameroom setup later on.

Thanks so much for any advice guys!
Adam

Ooops... I forgot to mention, I'm open to the 900 as well :) Any of these three seem like the right range, with good hard buttons and programmability.

I prefer the flexibility of the 950, but if you want to get one right now, I'd go with the 900. The 950 will have a problem with Vista (the 900 uses ActiveSync - not supported in Vista) until there's a software upgrade. The 850 is older technology that uses a serial port for a PC connection, which would necessitate buying a serial-to-USB adapter (at some point in the future - if not now). Also, the 900 and 950 have more device and button capability.

Mike
www.SurfRemoteControl.com

Which of these 3 work on the narrow band RF for mrf 350?

Both the 900 and 950 support this band.

Personally, I like the 900 for the price and ergonomics. The 950 has sound effects, minor graphical abilities, and offer variables which makes it from a programming perspecitive the better and more costly remote. But for the money, the 900 is a great remote.

I've got both the 900/950 units and have had the 850 in the past.

Personally, I like the button layout on the 900 over the 950 because I use DVR controls.
You can mimic those controls on the 950 by using the split buttons for "ahead" but I think the 900 is easier to learn/use.

The only thing I miss from the 850 is the FAV button.
Unless you want the color screen and extra soft buttons, I'd stick with the 900.

Yeah I gotta have the DVR controls. Even though it will CONTROL a media center machine on Vista, I have three other machines in the house, all running XP Pro, so no worries about the software.

Thanks for the input guys. If anyone knows of some good MX-900 pricing drop a brother a line ;)

adam @ golilm.com

Contact www.surfremote.com or www.proremotes.com.

One thing that should be mentioned is that only the 950 has the ability to use variables.

You can do the same on the 950.... just use the "inside" part of the FF and RR buttons, as the skip +/- buttons, wish they were separate like on the 900 but it still gives you RR/FF and skip +/-