Ok I had been fighting with myself to buy a tsu7000 fro dave D'Arche for $650 and then the tsu7500 comes out and the price goes to $850 and Dave no longer has the 7000. Now I find B&H Photo has the 7000 new(or so they say) for $565 add 50 to get the pronto guide (unfortunately Dave has not yet updated for the 7500 yet) and his extended batery and you have $615. As I best understand it the only difference is more memory and different hard buttons and better IR learning. Is it worth the difference?

Better IR Learning is news to me. I thought it was better hard buttons and memory only. It's well worth the $$$ if you plan on implementing a PCF such as LowPro's DVD Lobby with many, many jacket pictures.

There is nothing to update the Guide for. They opertate identically.

I talked to Dave on the phone a few weeks ago and he said there needed to be something added and he was going to try to update the guide this winter, but that he was very busy with his new website(i believe remotequest.com). He did not tell what needed to be added unfortunately, and even if he had I would not have understood him because I am not familiar with programming the 7000 at all. I guess I will go home and try to modify daniel's tsu700 pcf without having a actual device to test it on. I don't know know if this will give me a warm fuzzy or not. What tool do you reccommend to manipulate bitmaps

Thanks Lyndel, I have been toying with storing my 300+ dvds in , however I like to know where they are so in my tower works for now. Anyway then I would have to decide which one and how many to buy. Plus unfortunately I am space restricted where my hardware is now

If you aren't considering adding DVD or CD jackets beyond a 1000 or so count, the 7000 is way more than enough memory, as long as you convert PNG to 256 color and palettize.

could you explain what you mean by convert PNG to 256 and palettize. Is this just in reference to DVD jacket images?

PNG files can be 24 bit or converted to an 8-bit pallete of 256 colors known as PNG-8 where the image pixels are 8-bit color indices with a 256 color palette. Normal Image editors compress PNG as 24-bit images. PSP 8 has an export wizard that will allow one to do this. The savings on a 72x103 DVD Jacket can be as much as 3.5KB depending on how many colors and the frequency of color change. Normal 24-bit compression is somewhere around 8KB and this can be cut down to as little 4.5KB using palettized PNG-8 files.

Lyndel's answer (above) is exactly right. Here is what I specifically do using Corel Paint:

1. Save DVD jacket image from the IMBD data base (it's usually a jpeg or gif file).
2. Open the saved JPEG in Corel Paint
3. From the Image Menu choose Resample.
4. Resample (in pixels) to size you want for image in Pronto (I use 75x97 pixels...9 to a page)
5. From Image Menu choose Convert To Paletted 8 Bit / 256 Color
6. At the Convert to Paletted Image Screen choose Error Diffusion and Optomized
7. Finally I do a "Save As"...... file name.bmp
8. My DVD jacket buttons are 8.25kb in size

The same process is used for any graphic with the added process of:

In order to achieve maximun image quality you must open graphic in image editor (Corel Paint) at three to four times the size of final image.

Example: Pronto Background screen is 240x320 pixels so after I build graphic in Corel Draw as a 960 x 1280 pixel (4 times) graphic using 16 million colors I open in Corel Paint at 960 x 1280 pixels, then execute the same process listed above either saving as a bmp or png file depending on the use. The final Resample in this case is 240 x 320. This makes final image noticibly higher quality and any text will be much sharper. The beginning 450 kb image ends up being approx 11-12 kb

For the novice, Daniel has provided an excellent article about graphic creation that explains why you work @ 4X resolution.

[Link: remotecentral.com]

Thanks guys, ordered a 7500 from Digital1234.com for 640+10S&H and the ultimate Pronto guide and extended battery from dave d'arche and will begin to try and modify Daniel's ccf to my needs. wish me luck.
P.S. Dave, sorry I didn't buy from you but just couldn't justify $209 more.

Has anyone heard of this Digital1234.com? I looked at the site and saw they are from New Jersey, and don't have a contact phone number listed... It's not Brooklyn, but it's close...it would scare me to order from someone that I couldn't call, and had a "Too good to be true" price.

Good luck on that larry, and let us know how that goes.

Pricing on the 7500 has come down some...

We're now offering it at about the same cost listed above.

(and we have a phone #)

Wish you guys would tell us that members of this board have lowered price. I would have bought from a member first. Dave D'arche's price is still at 849. maybe it's against board rules to advertise price, but we ought to alllow some kind of place where "approved members" can it least tell us to check their web sites that they are competitive now. I got a UPS ship notice from Digital1234 today for delivery tomorrow. I actually learned about Digital1234.com from pricegrabber.com and their user reviews were pretty good there. Also someone else on this site in another thread said he had purchased from them.

Lyndel,
As you note above normal compression is 8KB and this is what I have now; however, 1000 covers x 3.5 is a fair amount of space saved. Is there any noticable loss in going to 4.5kb? And specifically can you walk me through menu in Adobe CS? I thought choosing Image : Mode : Indexed Color was my final/ultimate compression, but this only gets me to the 8.25 size. I also have Jasc Paint Shop Pro if that is what you use. Thanks for the help.