We have done several Savant Instant systems for clients that can't afford to step up to Savant Pro. They have been fine for certain systems, but are a bit limited. The homepro is a bit more intriguing to me in that it allows for a greater degree of custom ability, supports Zone 2, USES EMITTERS and has FULL control of Sonos. I have one on the way and am going to try it out. My biggest question is the response time on the remote - am curious to see if the experience is smooth or sluggish. Still, I think for this price point its a pretty cool system, and 100% Wi-Fi with Z-Wave option is not bad...

Just curious if anyone has used one of these out in the field yet?

I won a system at CEDIA. It is working great at my inlaws house controlling a simple 1 room system. I have it running wirelessly on their comcast provided modem/router.

I bought a hub and remote to test, just haven't had a chance to do it. Too many "I need this done before the holiday party" calls. Lol. But what intrigued me was the ability to open other apps from the HomePro app. There is some menu that allows you to select 8 icons of other apps and incorporate them in the HomePro app. If you have a favorite that urc doesn't integrate with, you can launch it from the HomePro app. If I understand it correctly it's a cool idea. I'll know more when I get around to hooking it all up.

Anyone have real world feedback yet??

I hooked one up in my family room and so far, it's worked fine.
Super simple setup though, Directv, bluray, TV.
The screen resolution is great and the channel favorites are nice (pulls in guide info showing whats on)
The only thing I don't like is the buttons on the remote are not backlit.
The app on the phone can be a little slow to open if it looses connection but once connected, it works like you'd expect.

By 'it uses WiFi", does that mean it connects the phone/tablet via WiFi, or it uses WiFi to control the devices via IP commands?

The hub connects WiFi and then you can either use the IR blaster or IR emitters to control the components. I'm using the remote and the iPad AND:

1) Programming is CCPish in the regard that it takes some time the first time you program it. You can then build your components, modify component pages the way one normally might and save these pages for future use. Eventually you would have a product that programs very quickly where you can import all of your pages and have a 2-zone remote that looks good finished in 10 minutes.

2) Lack of backlighting makes for a somewhat unusable remote at night. However, the price point merits this.

3) Quick pick up and response out of the remote. I've had no issues with latency.

4) I'm still waiting for another brief Internet drop to test something. When my Internet cut out briefly due to horrible provider service, the hub went off-line and wouldn't connect back unless I power-cycled it. None of my other streaming devices or other remote systems have acted this way. I guess I could unplug my router to see if this happens again but I want to see if it happens organically. I'll keep you posted.

5) Programming is a little vague regarding the "tree view" (it's really not a tree view) of components. When you hide a component, it still shows up in your programming with no indication that it has disappeared. You have to look on your devices to see if it is hidden or not. No IR database drag-and-drop capability as well so you have to be a little creative with certain macros.

We're going to test it with a few more systems before rolling it out. I think it is a nice product at the price point. For someone that wants beautiful and more functional iPad/iPhone pages (where you have navigation and all needed buttons on one page), this isn't the product for you. However, for an inexpensive option that (so far) is more reliable than Harmony, we like it.

Wow!!! No back light? I did not know this. And no, absolutely no, the price point has nothing to do with this.
You can get back lighting on cheap $20 remotes. You can get a DirecTV backlit remote for $29.99. URC use to sell a WR7 with back light for $24.99. And I can not think of ANY remote more expensive than that, that does not come with back lighting.

100% no excuse for no back lighting on that remote. What a f^n disaster of something that should have been so basically elemental.

[edit]: Are you trolling us Punter? The TRC-820 is basically the same remote and it has back lighting. And looking thru the manual on the R500, it has a menu with "button lighting" listed. WTF!

the main screen and the 6 buttons around the screen have backlighting.  the rest of the hard buttons are not backlit.

read the fine print:

to view buttons at night, hold flashlight steady with your right hand (if you are left handed), use your left hand to hold the flashlight if your right handed.

:)

Agreed, the price point does NOT justify no back lighting.

Does anybody know of any differences in the effects on a LAN of a problem caused by the provider, versus you pulling the main feed, be it phone line or cable? I think you should pull the cable/DSL connection to see what happens.


No check mark or anything at all to indicate that it's hidden?

That... that makes me sad :(
How URC could screw that up, that royally, is just disturbing. I now know why you guys doing a lot of TC, skip the 820 and go for the next step up.

I have to say, that I can not in good conscience sell that setup to a customer. That is such an important feature, that is so basic, that I look at the product as engineered defective. And I would be selling a defective product to every customer I sold it to.
And I had a webinar on Tuesday, that I would get a MX HomePro setup for significant discount off dealer, to play with. Not even going to do it now.

Yeah thats sucks.

That is pretty true. I'd even add that the 1080 needs to have brighter back-lit keys. I had to pull a TC system with with two 1080's because the owner didn't think they were bright enough, I agree. I put in two 990's and he was fine with there keys. I just hope someone at URC is checking RC (Hank?) and giving the feedback to the people "upstairs".