Folks,

I think my question of "Considering the ProntoPro's list price is $999 USD, what do you think the RC9200 color should be priced at?" was not understood. I was not asking for a guess of Marantz's planned list price I was asking what YOU thought it should be priced at?

I don't think you can make such a comparison, since the Pro is way overpriced for the value received. The Pro sould be priced around $500, and given that the Marantz at, perhaps, $600-700.

Anthony,

I don't know if you own a ProntoPro, what i was referring to is the 4 buttons that reside directly underneath the screen area. Through the S/W you can change the soft labels directly above the buttons. With the new Marantz layout, the buttons don't correspond to any area on the screen.

As far as the color and memory issues: If, as you suggest, you use the same buttons, you will not be taking advantage of the added screen area.

Furthermore, many of us use the ProntoPro for more than simple buttons. We put the cover artwork from CD and DVD covers on the screen. When you do this, you go through memory quickly (I've already filled mine up) and 256 colors is not enough to give a nice crisp image.

If the ProntoPro allowed for the use of jpg and gif images, it wouldn't consume as much memory as it does with bitmaps. This is because BMP files do not use file compression (except for RLE files). For example, a 200x200 pixel cd cover image at 256 color uses approximately 40K of memory uncompressed. If you had a full 8MB of memory available, this would allow for about 200 of these images. Since the actual amount of memory is much less than 8MB after you include space for macros, IR codes, etc. the amount of images you can store is muh less. Consider that many CD or DVD changers store 300 discs and you can see why more memory is needed.

Giorgio,

I believe, according to the picture, that there is two buttons (the ones at the top with no labels), that can be soft labelled. But again, we can make a lot of assumptions... ;-)

Giorgio: I do have a Pro, I have not had the time to mess with it yet (to create a CCF for it- I am still using my old CCF for my TS-1000).
1)I new you were talking about those four buttons, but from the picture the top two (without pictures on them) seem to be renamable. I am assuming that at least some of the other 6 (around the pad) can be reprogrammed, just not renamed.

I assume by "lager screen" what is meant is there is more of the screen to use. If that is an extra 10 or 20 pixels vertically, it might not be worth it to redo all your buttons, and you might just add 3-5 extra pixels between the icons (I found larger spaces between icons make it easier to use without looking, so I stopped crowding my screen a long time ago)

Some do use cover art, but even at 256 the result is acceptable. Gif, Jpeg would take less place, but they need more processing, and the more you shrink it (file size) the worst it looks.

Martin you beat me to it :-) (at least in the poicture they look labeled)

Of course, I think $1000 for the Pro is ridiculous to start with.

... but I don't think the new Marantz should be priced higher than the Pronto Pro... they took a good idea and improved upon it with a thumbpad and some extra buttons. Pretty much all the initial planning and market research was paid for by Philips and the others with mimic-remotes.

Yup, they seem to be labeled "BACK" and "AHEAD". I'm sure that can be changed.

Finally - Marantz gets it!

I'm glad to see a larger screen plus the rocker switch. And so many extra hard buttons!

The color display needs help (256-color passive matrix is tired) and I have to assume they'll still be using that 33MHz processor from the ProntoPro.

If they price the RC5200 at the same as the RC5000i (street price around $370, right?) it would seem to be worth it for me to upgrade.

I can't see Marantz pricing the RC9200 below the ProntoPro (Phillips wouldn't like that I don't think) and thus I can't see overpaying for that 256-color display.

Personally, I'd like to see them upgrade to the 66-MHz CPU and an active-matrix screen (the 66 supports TFT, but not the 33). Since it's the same CPU family, it shouldn't take much programming changes.

Hi Anthony,

I think if you consider the large amount of screen area that is currently unusable on the ProntoPro, you will find that the increase in size is closer to 100 pixels. So we're talking about close to a 50% increase in memory based on screen dimensions alone. Besides, Compact Flash memory is cheap.

The drawback of not crowding the buttons is that you may wind up with multiple panels to accomplish all common functions. I like all my frequently-used buttons on the same panel. Of course, having a physical D-pad will greatly improve that since this one element seems to occupy a large area of most people's panels.

I disagree that the 256 color is acceptable. This is probably made worse by the fact that the screen is a crappy passive matrix type. The ghosting of images is pretty bad, but when you add the dithering that must be done in 256 color mode, the resulting image is not very clear.

Even with minor compression, jpeg files can be substantially smaller without sacrificing much image quality. Even RLE would reduce memory consumption without resorting to lossy compression techniques.

As far as processing power required to support jpg, if Phillips/Marantz went to a faster processor, this wouldn't be an issue. It's not like every PDA on the market can't do this already. Many of these same PDAs also include other of the features I mentioned while selling for $400-600US.

Let's face it, what most of us really want is a re-packaged iPAQ with hard buttons for Vol, Chan, and Mute and stronger IR emitters in a slightly more ergonomic case. I would buy one. Wouldn't you?

If you're using many solid-color items, GIF files are better than JPG. But if you have a lot of colors or shading, the JPG is better. I think they should support the new format... what is it, PNG?

For all that are interested the price for the new Marantz remotes are posted, hold onto your wallets...!!![Link: tvinsite.com]

Quote:

The company also planned to showcase its lineup of next generation touchscreen learning remotes: the RC9200 ($1,249), RC5200 ($599.99) and RC3200 ($329.99). All feature customizable, illuminated touchscreen panels with electroluminescent backlighting, advanced functionality and sleek ergonomic designs. The top-of-the-line RC9200 features a full-color, large panel display.

Hmmmmmmm......

... Greg

Please Marantz, expandable memory

Also, drop the dragon cpu and go ARM :-)