Anyone besides me irritated with the subtle but significant change in button placement between the 500 and the 700. Between the 2 the p-on and p-off buttons are reversed, and the 500 has the PLAY above the joystick and the 700 has PLAY below the joystick.

I use one of each, 700 in the main theater room and the 500 in the bedroom. My thought was to save a few bucks by using the 500 in the less sophisticated environment. Now I find I have to light up the remote to find the power and play buttons!

Just a rant. I don't really care which way they are, but I sure wish they were consistent.

Mike

I feel ya dude! I have a 500 at my house and I program many 850s at work. I'm constantly coming home and turning off my system by accident or stopping my dvd instead of resuming play from paused! Or the opposite- trying to demo my client's sweet new system and I look retarded because I'm hitting the wrong buttons... oh well. Nature of the beast! (They're still killer remotes though!)

That subtle layout difference is what made me buy a URC-200 instead of an MX-500 when I got a second remote to compliment my MX-700. I decided it was easier to deal with 5 vs 10 LCD flanking buttons than a different layout for the standard buttons, since I almost always look at the LCD-flanking buttons when I press them, and almost never look at the standard buttons.