I'm finally moving on from an age old TS1000 to the RU990.

Is there anyway of changing the backlight settings for the hard buttons? Ideally I'd like the button backlight to follow the screen backlight as the button markings are hard to make out.

I've submitted multiple bug reports to Philips and talked directly to the design engineers at that past 2 CEDIA tradeshows about this exact issue. There is no hard button backlight activation from either the tilt sensor or button/screen presses.

This is a huge oversight seeing as how the feature is included in older Pronto models as well as newer Marantz models. Several firmware revisions have been released since my numerous complaints and I'm still waiting for that feature. It makes me want to abandon Philips products because each new generation is two steps forward and one step back.

Yep very anoying especially as they have chosen stealth markings on the buttons anyway.

I'm also finding code learning difficult with a number of remotes. I was thinking there was a fault until I tried my mates one, which was the same.

I'm tending to aggree with you about two steps forward one step back. The hard button placement is also not very easy to use.

For what it is worth I have emailed Philips, I figured the more people that do it the more likley they might take notice.

For one brief moment I thought I had a work around... I configured a button on a hidden page to have the special function "backlight", pressing this lit the hard buttons, so far so good. My next step was to call this button from another. Did it work? Did it hell. It would appear that you cannot call special functions from another.

I own a TSU7000 or the equivalent of RU980. Over the course of time you will get to know your remote and the need to see the buttons will become a non issue. Philips did raise the buttons on the TSU7500/RU990 to allow them to have a distinct feel. You could always buy a coal miner's hat if it gets too bad. :-)