On August 27, 2010 at 02:04, treyrx said...
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?
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.
Last edited by Lowpro on August 27, 2010 14:03.