I purchased the TSU1000 (green model) and TSU3000 (silver with blue screen) and customized both with help from this site and loved every second of it. In building a new home my wife and I included a media room and are considering the 9600 or 9400, but I notice they are only to be programmed by installers. Is the new software much more difficult than the original? I'm certainly NO installer but I don't mind the hours and "leg work" that go into these units. Is the price difference worth it between the units I'm considering, I really just like the look of the tablet vs traditional but wanted to know real experiences between the two. Thanks for your input.

Hello treyrx

I was in exact the same situation about 6 weeks ago. Reading thru this forum and speaking to the dealer initially confused me and I questioned myself if I would be able to do the installation.

In general the basics in designing the pages is similar to the old PENG you have been used to work with. Biggest differences are that you now have a database in the background with all codes for your devices, so no additional pages needed where you need to link to and second the possibility to use ProntoScript, which if you do not have Java language skills look strange in the beginning. But I can tell you as soon as you have started to "play" with it and see the capabilities you will for sure love it.
Additional there are all the great people here in this forum who are a great help if there are questions (and for sure in the beginning there will be many).

The decision if you buy a 9400 or 9600 is up to your choice / wallet.
Over here in Europe the prices are way higher than in the states, therefor I decided to buy the 9400 as the 9600 would have caused some major discussions with my wife ("How can you spend more than 1000 Euros for "A" remote - we already have one and its working fine.....").

Independent of the model of the remote I can promise to you that you will have a lot of fun during the installation which for me now has taken approx. 80 hours and there are daily new ideas and debugging to do. So, as usual, it might become a never-ending project.

My recommendation to you is: GO AND BUY IT !!!


Regards

miwi

I don't think that "will it be too difficult for me?" should be an important consideration for you. This is because, at the basic level, configuring the 9400/9600s is similar to configuring the earlier TSUs (or any other all-in-one IR remote).

Rather, the key issue is "what do you want to use the remote for?". This is because there is no point buying an expensive 9400/9600 unless you want to have more than just have an all-in-one IR remote.

In some sense, the possibilities with the 9400/9600 are endless. The configurations are totally flexible in terms of activities, pages, layouts, macros etc. They can communicate by TCPIP and RS232 as well as IR and can thus communicate with your PCs and/or with equipment not in line of sight. And they are computers which can (but don't have to) be programmed in Javascript (note: not Java, and unrelated to Java), which means that you can do logic, computations, conditional clauses, interrogate web pages, etc.

I also had the earlier TSUs but can safely say that buying an 9400 was one of the best purchasing decisions that I have ever made. It is light years better and more powerful than the earlier TSUs.

Finally, the 9400 and 9600 are functionally identical. So the choice between them depends on ergonomics (e.g. tablet vs wand), screen size (the 9600 has quite a lot more pixels) and cost (the 9600 costs quite a lot more).

The 9400 has portrait screen (240x320) and 2 more hard keys than the 9600 which has landscape screen (640x480).

I was in a similar position earlier this year. I had originally used an RU980, which I was very pleased with. I downloaded the software to try it out before choosing between the 9400 and 9600. This helped me get a feel for the constraints of the 2 screens (i.e. portrait vs. landscape).

This actually made it easy for me. I finally went for the 9600...and I really like it.

I am also in Europe...and the prices are very high. I ended up buying from a US supplier on eBay (yes after a lot of research). I ended out paying less for the 9600 than I would have paid for the 9400 in Europe. There are clearly pitfalls to this approach, but it clearly worked well for me.

The software for the Pronto Professional line is freely available at Philips site and here in the files section. If you are already familiar with PENG/PPENG, then there will be little to no learning curve whatsoever initially. Going from the TSU3000 to the TSU9400 for instance will be as simple as installing PEP v1 for the TSU9400, then importing your PCF file. PEP v2 does not allow for importing PCF files, so installing PEP v1 is required unless you want to start from scratch with PEP v2. That being said, PEP v1 is identical to PENG/PPENG is most every respect. Of course it offers more advanced functionality as well. It just doesn't force you to do things a certain way as PEP v2 does. The steps to perform a given task in PEP v1 are identical to that of PENG/PPENG basically and as Lyndel pointed out, the TSU9400 uses the same portrait orientation (240x320) as the Pronto NG line. I went from a TSU7500 to the TSU9600 myself as I prefer the landscape orientation (640x480) and better screen resolution. Either way you choose to go I can assure you that you won't be disappointed.

Few things to keep in mind once you import your PCF to PEP v1...
The TSU3000 only supported greyscale (16 greyshades), so I'd imagine you'll want to update your graphics to color. (I don't think we're in Kansas anymore Toto.) If going from the TSU3000 to the TSU9600 quite a bit more work will be involved obviously as you'll need to redesign your layout to take advantage of the 640x480 screen area. As you are working on updating things just keep in mind that you won't be able to download your configuration file from the remote to the computer like you could with PENG/PPENG, so make sure to always keep your configuration file backed up. When working with graphics there is only one big difference aside from the color support. PEP only supports PNG transparencies. As such, if you have any graphics which used the "Pixel in the upper left most corner" transparency option you'll need to update those accordingly to use PNG transparency instead. The TSU9x00 also offers several new hard buttons of course, so you'll want to assign functions to those hard buttons. The Page Up and Page Down hard buttons are programmable as well per PEP. This was not the case in PENG/PPENG. That's just the tip of the iceburg when going from the Pronto NG line to the Pro line. ProntoScript opens up endless possibilities and there are plenty of resources available here at RC to get you started in that regard.

Per PEP v2, the latest version of the PEP editor...
Once importing your PCF into PEP v1 you could certainly save your XCF, perform the required updates to your configuration file, then opening your XCF in PEP v2. Again, as you are already familiar with PENG there will be little to no learning curve per PEP v2. The same basic structure is offered as with PEP v1. You are just forced to do things a certain way. The "link" action is no longer supported, but PEP v2 does offer a feature called "Commonly Used Macros". Only action lists which are created under the "Commonly Used Macros" section of the tree can be linked to basically, versus PEP v1 allowing you to "link" to the action list of any button from any other button throughout your configuration file. PEP v2 also doesn't support IR codes learned to buttons. It supports database codes only, so you'll need to update your initial XCF file in PEP v1 accordingly before opening your file in PEP v2, so that your IR codes are retained. There is a sticky thread on this, so check that out. Know also that any XCF saved in PEP v2 can't then be opened in PEP v1, so make sure to keep a copy of your PEP v1 XCF backed up. You may find once working in PEP v2 that you prefer to work in PEP v1. That being said, you can open a PEP v1 XCF in PEP v2 at any time and go from there if you want to take advantage of any exclusive features offered by PEP v2.

Lowpro,

I've just bought a 9600 after many years with the 3000/3500 and your post is a brilliantly concise explanation of the issues I'm about to face.

Thanks !!!!

Peter M

Glad to be of help. My first Pronto was actually a TSU3000. Owned it for a couple months, then exchanged it for a TSU7000. Upgraded from there to a TSU7500 for a short time prior to moving on to the Pro line. I personally favor the TSU9600, but do have a TSU9400 as well. I also favor PEP v1 over PEP v2 for a host of reasons. Just because PEP v2 is the latest version of the editor doesn't make it "the latest and greatest" for everyone.