I've loved my Original Pronto (TS1000) for years, and I recently (this week) got an iPronto. Now that I've been going through the exercise of programming the iPronto for the last few days, there are some things that (I believe) need addressing.

1. On the TS1000, I could assign an "Action" to a device. That is, when I switched to "TiVo" I could have a macro execute automatically that would set the sources on all the devices (receiver, TV, etc.) such that everything would be set correctly for video and audio on a device switch.

The properties page for each device on the iPronto, however, only lets me program the hard buttons. There is no "per-device-action" -- at least as far as I can tell. Useful functionality available on an older device but elided from a newer one is not what what I would call progress.

2. I added some of the button libraries from this site to my gallery. Now the gallery is so big it takes several seconds to open (on a fast PC). This could be improved.

3. The default gallery is woefully inadequate, and doesn't even contain the stuff that's in the current latest default.icf!

4. Now that my gallery has a lot of stuff in it, selecting "All" will crash iProntoEdit every time.

5. The scroll wheel, as it currently exists, is useless. I would much rather have a tab somewhere for controlling volume, and be able to use the scroll wheel as two more hard buttons, in effect (this would help offset the "missing" two hard buttons from my TS1000). I know I'm not the first to mention this -- I just wanted to throw my hat on the pile.

6. Freezing. This morning I touched the screen and it woke up, then plugged it in and it froze. Had to reset.

Enough for now. Also, if I've missed something, I'm eager to learn...

Just to address your first point, you can still do that. You simply assign a macro to a button, finishing with a "jump to" command. Then pressing that button will assign all inputs and switch to that page. Unless you mean using the tabs at the side of the screen? If so, then no, you can't do it that way, but you couldn't do that with my old Pronto either using the "device select menu" thing on the top right of the screen. I can't quite see what you're getting at there, unless it's just the new interface and editor that you're still getting to grips with.

Thanks for the reply, and... hmmm. On my old TS1000, selecting a device from the "device list" on the right (the one that "drops down" when you touch the currently selected device) does indeed allow me to execute a macro as the screen transitions to a newly selected device.

I *do* use the jump-to trick on the new iPronto's buttons, but I *definitely* miss the automatic macro execution on device switch. As you note, the equivalent functionality on the iPronto would be to execute a macro when I select a device from the tabs on the left.

The key difference between the two editors (in this regard) is that on the TS1000 there is a tab called "Action" on the "Device Properties" page for every device. You can put any macro in there you like, and it is executed automatically when that device becomes the "current device" on the Pronto. There is another tab called "Hard Keys" that lets you do the same hard-key assignments you can on the iPronto. The iPronto, by contrast, has no tab analagous to "Action" on the "Device Properties" dialog (the four tabs on each device's Properties dialog are (as you know): Label, Settings, Hard buttons, and RF. What I believe is missing there is one called "Action" that does what "Action" on the Pronto's editor does.

Does this make sense?

Yes it makes sense. Must be me that missed the existence of that function on the old Pronto. I never used it that way, wanting to design a "girlfriend-proof" ccf, so used all buttons and aliases to guide you from one page to another. After a while I found it so intuitive to use that I just never bothered with drop-down menus. Same with the iPronto. Well, you learn something new every day!

I'm hoping Philips will introduce an update that allows me to remove those tabs on the left side of the screen completely! Just shows there is more than one way of skinning a cat. I can understand that if you're used to using your Pronto that way, you'd miss it on the new one. Change can be a horrible thing to put up with! :)

As a friend of mine says, "You learn something new every day unless you're careful."

I wouldn't mind if the buttons on the left could be turned off, as that way I could completely control how you get from screen to screen (via "my" touch-screen buttons only). Still, the old functionality of forcing a macro to run as you transition does have its uses (especially if they don't get rid of the left tabs).

On a different topic, why is there even a gallery at all? Why not just use the host file system (and built-in thumbnail previewing)? iProntoEdit would have to import graphics as I used them on the device, of course. As it stands now, the gallery and what's "in use" in an ICF seem completely disconnected anyway. That is, buttons that came with the default ICF file are not even in the gallery (which really seems odd to me).

I agree with you there. Have you downloaded the new Philips gallery buttons CD from the file section? There are some good new ones in there. I found it annoying that there was no way of using the defaul icf while adding matching buttons to modify it for my purposes. It wasn't a big concern, as I wanted to totally personalise my iPronto, but I would have liked to do that first, so it was at least usable whilst I wrote my own icf. Because of the poor gallery, I ended up not really using it for a couple of weeks while I went through the long process of writing a scratch one. But that was only annoying for the first few weeks. I couldn't care less now! :) Still, it does seem a bit silly to have a fancy default icf with nothing in the gallery which matches it...

The Gallery CD: is that the set posted by Kees? If so, then yes I have it. If you're thinking of another set, then I haven't found anything named (roughly) "Philips gallery buttons CD" (and I just looked again). Of course, I may just be blind...

No, it's the Neil Watts one. Worth a look. :)