First off, I got my Pronto yesterday. What an AWESOME remote. I cannont wait to get my hands on the software. January can't come too soon now as far as I'm concerned! I played around with it til 1:00 in the morning last night and have been polishing some macros today as well. I love this thing.

I have run into one problem though and I thought I'd ask how others are dealing with this. Both my Sony VCR and DVD player remotes have jog shuttle dials on their remotes. The free turning kind, not the spring-loaded ones. The way they work is that you turn it so far to get 2X speed, a little further for FF1, a little farther to get FF2, etc. Turning it the other way generates slow1, slow2, rewind, rewind 2X, etc. Anyway...I'm having trouble trying to get the rewind codes learned on my DVD device buttons. I hit the button on the Pronto to learn the signal, then turn the dial back to try and hit the right code. In several tries, all I've been able to get is slow2 at best. The Pronto learns the wrong signal, as the DVD remote sends out several different IR codes as you turn the dial back. The functions don't seem to be available as a regurlar button either. :-(

Any ideas on overcoming this hurdle?

Kurt

I have a sony DVD and VCR too, I was able to learn the 2x jog and shuttle fast forward and rewind codes with no problem.

For 99% of the button's you learn, you want to start the learning process on the pronto, and then quickly press the button you want to learn on the sony remotes. The Jog and shuttle commands are the exception I have found. What I did was turn the dial on the sony remote all the way to the 2x position, and then start the learning process on the Pronto, not letting go of the sony's shuttle till the procedure was complete.

You want to avoid doing that in most cases as that made it difficult learning a bunch of my reciever's button's, so think of this as a solution for just this particular feature and not the best way to do it for the other buttons. I don't know if I explained that very well, so if you need more info just let me know. :)

Good Luck!

Yikes. I know I'll encounter this problem too. I know you don't want to hear "keep experimenting," but that may be necessary.

The better answer is probably to try to get access to a remote from a newer Sony TV. Mine has actual buttons for VCR and DVD under the flap. I don't know what speeds you get when you use these, but this should work.

Of course, the TV remote also has a "system off" button that will turn off all Sony components--a code that's missing on the Sony DVD and VCR remotes.

Will's suggestion is a good one, and is the method I used to capture my Mitsubishi VCR shuttle ring codes.

The Pronto will learn the first codes it receives after you hit the button to learn. Since the shuttle ring of most remotes will send the appropriate code continuously while the shuttle ring is held in that position, the trick is to rotate the shuttle ring to the right position first, then hit the button you want to teach that position to on the Pronto. This is the opposite order to the normal method.

This technique worked fine for both my Mitsu VCRs and Pioneer laserdisc player.

Perhaps if I find myself with some spare time on my hands (yeah, right...) I'll go add a 'shuttle' control to the Pronto OS. It's not a simple thing to do, or we'd probably have done it already :-)

Jay, that 'system off' button on some Sony remotes is essentially a fixed macro - it sends several 'off' codes for various Sony items.

Because it consists of several unique IR codes, it can't be learnt by normal learning remotes, which are expecting either a repeated code, or a single code followed by a short 'key still down' code which is repeated.

Mr. Helpful,

Any idea whether discrete on and offs exist for
Sony VCR, Pioneer LD, GI cable box. Or should
I not get my hopes up.

Late.

Mr. Dude, it's pretty unlikely. There's a slight possibility that there are 'On' & 'Off' codes for the Sony VCR, but unlikely that the Pioneer LD player and GI cable box will have them. You might want to investigate something like Xantech's GateKeeper System.