I have recently purchased the Omniremote software, and have also downloaded the tvPDA software, in the eternal search to find the ultimate universal remote for Palm III. It seems that neither completely fit the bill. Both have great features, but neither quite go the whol way to satisfying my requirements of a remote. Omniremote looks dull, but controls almost everything I own (except my NTL Digital Home set top box, and my Wharfedale 750 DVD Player) and has some great features. tvPDA looks pretty cool, the TV Listings are cool (even though the channel setup is completely wrong!), and it controls my NTL box no problem. But neither do both. If I could configure tvPDA to control all my AV equipment I'd be happy to pay the £14 a year to subscribe. If OmniRemote would control my NTL box, and looked cool, I'd probably buy that too. But neither fit the bill, and I end up using two remote utilities on my Palm which is more hassle than shuffling through my collection of 8 remotes to find the right one!. Can anyone tell me if tvPDA has any intention to branch out into the universal remote arena? and if Omniremote intend to make their application look cool, and control my NTL box (what is the difference here?). Both aplications are great, and I pass on my congratulations to the designers, but they just don't do it all.....yet!

There are plans to expand tvPDA to control other devices but I can't say when that will be or what form it will take.

The NTL/Telewest/Pace/IrDA problem is already extensively covered in the Pronto forum. Search for IrDA and Pace and you'll see what I mean. In short, the control standard employed by a particular range of Pace boxes is based on IrDA and quite different from the more usual carrier-based IR standard used for other CE devices. An unfortunate consequence is that many Universal Remotes cannot be programmed to control the Pace box.

tvPDA, however, does work with this range of boxes. A positive side-effect is that it can change channels very quickly because the code length of a single key press is far shorter than the CE method.

OK, as soon as soon as tvPDA can do that, I'll buy it. That said, a Pronto is looking like the best bet all round. I never did like my palm pilot anyway, my IPAQ beats it hands down. If tvPDA's tv listings were correct I might still consider it as a useful purchase. They were definitely not correct for my NTL Digital Cable setup though.

You can change the channel dial positions in tvPDA in menu -> settings -> dialpositions. I'm not sure why they are wrong as we got them from NTL themselves. Do you have favourites set on the NTL box?

You can contact [email protected] for more help with the lineup.

Also, FYI, we'll be supporting the full range of UK channels from March onwards.