Actually, his idea was that the cover actually had the hard buttons on it (keypad, transport) over another section of the screen with less-used functions under it. The only reasons I can see for a "cover" is to keep size down and to keep prying hands away from sensitive features. Sounds good? Yes.

But I feel it would become too much of a pain for anyone who actually needed to use the buttons under they keypad. Additionally, it would be a weak spot in the design. My experiences with "covers" and "flip up sections" haven't been too good.

What we need is a remote with all basic functions in hard buttons, but also with a large LCD with everything else. I'd really like to see the Pronto developed this way, but the unit would probably get too big. I'm sure there's a way to do what we want... maybe with one of those IBM "butterfly" keyboards. :-)