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Topic:
Long winded 1st impressions.
This thread has 3 replies. Displaying all posts.
Post 1 made on Wednesday November 4, 1998 at 00:07
Will Cunningham
Historic Forum Post
Howdy,

I received my Pronto remote control this morning and figured I would share my initial impressions. It will take some time for the "new toy" factor to wear off enough for me to know if I really like actually using it, but I have a feeling I am going to love it. :) Just as a warning this is probably going to end up a little on the long side.

When I first opened the box, I was surprized by how compact it seemed. It is shorter than my other remote controls, and a little wider. It is about the size of my hand, minus the tip's of my fingers. I got over that pretty quick and was pleased to find batteries in the box as well as a 100 page (aprox) manual.

I was a little worried that the manual looked a little thin, but it described things in a way that made sense to me and I do not think there was anything very difficult about programming it anyway.

I put in the batteries and got a little worried when nothing showed up on the screen. I put the batteries in correctly :) and was still a little nervous when it did not show anything on the screen. That was when I found the contrast control and breathed a sigh of relief when the cool looking display became visible.

I am not really a manual reading kinda guy, I normally try to muddle through and end up wasting tons of time. This time was a little different, I had a couple of hours to kill before lunch so I actually read it.

After lunch I really sat down and started customizing the remote for my system. I decided to start with my Mitsubishi TV remote since that has the least number of features I wanted to duplicate. I set it up to do everything my tv remote could do and did not run into any real probelms at all. There were only 2 cases where I did not get exactly what I wanted, and both were very minor. I wanted one of the button's to be a little larger so I could fit more text to describe the PIP input selector, but that was no big deal. I also wanted to change the layout of one of the templates a little so I could my PIP channel changer going up and down instead of left to right.

I decided to tackle my yamaha receiver's remote next. I had a few minor problems with this one, but I don't think the Pronto had anything to do with it as this was just a classic case of operator error. :) The first thing I did was
assign a global defintion of the receiver's mute and volume controls to the physcical buttons. I tried it from the receiver's device panel and it worked great. I then switched to the TV's device panel to see if it was really global, and I discovered I was controlling the TV's volume. I assumed I had messed something up, and after a while I tried it under the VCR device panel and found I was contolling the receiver like I would expect. After I made that discovery I re-read that section of the manual and things were working just like they said. The global deffinitios can be over-ridden to work for a specific device
when that device's page is active. The TV setting's used the volume and mute, so there really was no problem, just some time spent chasing my tail. I can't even blame the manual as it was clearly stated, I just must have blinked when I read it. :)

I then proceded to program up the rest of the reciever's functions, I labeled and then learned most of the keys. When I went to test it about 1/2 of the button's did not work. I tracked it down to a problem with the way I was doing the learning, I would press and hold the key on my yamaha remote and then hit the key on the pronto I wanted to learn the function. That did not work out so well, when I re-did it I would press the key on the Pronto first and then the key on the yamaha. I did not have a single problem when I started doing it that way and the whole programing process started to get faster as I got into the
swing of things.

The next remote I programmed was my Sony VCR's. This one took a while because I spent quite a bit of time making sure I got the layout the way I wanted things. I knew from my past experiances with the Sony touch screen remote that I wanted
to avoid having the power or eject button close to the fast forward button. I was tired of turning of my VCR by accident with my "no look" fast forwarding. After I decided how I wanted to label the buttons, and which templates were going to get which buttons, the actual learning of the functions was a brease.

I have 2 of the exact same Sony VCR's so I was very happy to find the "copy device" capablity of the pronto. It saved me quite a bit of time since it made it so I did not have to re-type all my labels or re-setup which templates had which buttons. After the copy, and some quick learning, I had my 2nd VCR done with no problems.

Things went pretty well when I started in on my Sony DVD remote too. I spent quite a bit of time on this one, but only because I was being really picky with the layout and naming of each of the keys.

I spent about 5 hours getting things the way I want and am pretty happy with how things turned out. I am positive I could have done it much faster if I wanted too, but I was not really in any rush.


I have not spent much time actually using the remote to conrol my devices, but I am really impressed with what I have seen. I love the "feel" of the remote too, it fit's comfortably in my hand and I don't think I will have much trouble
using it one handed.

The Pronto has a very sturdy feel to it, though I don't know how fragile it really is. I hope I never know for sure, but it feels like it could take a real beating and survive.

I would also like to see the PC cable and software for creating and updating templates released. I was able to easily support all of the features of all of my remotes with the default templates, but there are a few that I would arange a little differently if I had the software.

There is one thing that I would like to do that I have not figured out how to do yet, so I figure I will ask and see if anyone knows. I was wondering if it was possible to assign the buttons for scrolling between device pannels to the 2 big
buttons at the bottom of the remote?

Take Care,

Will


OP | Post 2 made on Wednesday November 4, 1998 at 16:01
ziad
Historic Forum Post
In response to "Long winded 1st impressions." by Will Cunningham on 03/11/98 23:07:26:

While I don't have the answer to your question, I just wanted to thank you for the first impressions...


OP | Post 3 made on Friday November 6, 1998 at 17:55
Jan van Ee
Historic Forum Post
In response to "Long winded 1st impressions." by Will Cunningham on 03/11/98 23:07:26:

Will,

I'm glad you like your Pronto.

Regarding your question: I'm afraid that what you're asking is not possible. The best you could do with the current configuration format (note that you cannot do this using the Pronto UI) is assign an action list which takes you to a specific panel to each of the two hard keys at the bottom of the unit. You can do this per device.
OP | Post 4 made on Wednesday November 11, 1998 at 23:48
Will Cunningham
Historic Forum Post
Thanks very much for the answer to my question, I figured that would be the case since the scroll keys look to be part of the OS.

I decided to set the hard keys to fast forward and rewind and that has worked out wonderfully. I fast forward through commecials so often that it made the most sense.


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