On April 5, 2008 at 00:10, oex said...
i'd do a little more leg work on your part and move up to a mx900
just my 2 cents
I have an MX900 and we have been very UNHAPPY with it.
I spent a small fortune on 2 Philips Pronto TSU2000's that each died after a year, and a 3rd TSU3000 that also died after year. Although they were flaky, they were the only units to date that satisfied 90% of my programming needs and allowed me to completely program the LARGE screen with my own graphics. However, rather than buying yet another and have it die, I next tried the MX-900.
We were happy at first with its layout and managed to get its programming to meet 70% of our needs. However, MAJOR issues made us very unhappy customers.
- Very Slow Operation
Complex macros sent commands slowly and reducing latency only caused commands to fail. It takes forever to send a normally complex sequence. It seems it always sends commands in a slow pokey sequential manner. My wife, a technical researcher and heavy computer user, was very unhappy since it makes you feel like a slave, holding and pointing for a long time for everything to finish. I had to add a screen that said, "sending, wait, don't move". It makes you feel stupid. To turn on 3 components and set their inputs and modes, could take up to 20 seconds. With no visual feedback and no programmable beeps, that's a very long time and you feel in-the-dark not knowing if it is finished. If you did this once a day, maybe that would suffice. But in a normally complex and well used home theatre, that's atrocious.
- Bad Build Quality
After 1 year, the keys all began to die. First the Forward, then Play, then Reverse, then Skip, then ... etc. Now all the most used keys are dead. Only the activity keys at the edge of the LCD window work now so we can at least start the macros to turn on our components.
- Hard Keys are Hard to Use!
The keys, though well-chosen and reasonably well-placed are poorly contoured, the cursor pad is a curved edge diamond with sharp edges that are unpleasant to touch, and all but the programmable LCD activity keys require significant pressure to activate. The result is a crude, unresponsive "hard to use" feeling. The LCD side keys (though easy to press) feel mushy with no tactile feedback to let you know they activated. This was also very confusing to the family. You have to train yourself to work with (and put up with) this unit. That's not what an expensive piece of automation is supposed to do for you.
- Horrible Battery Life
Unlike most other pricey units, there is no charging stand nor any way to add one. You have to use 4-AAA batteries which, under normal use in a Tivo or PVR scenario, go dead in about 14 days of active use. Worse, as they deplete, the unit starts to act erratically. So, it really only works well under heavy use for the 1st week then a bit for the 2nd until it dies with a loud beep. Be sure you always have a good supply of AAA's. Even at $2 for 4 cheap batteries, that's $60/year. Recharge-ables work for even less time since they are charged so many times in one year and cost many times. By comparison, the OEM equipment remotes for our same equipment, each last many months on standard AAA's. E.g., our DirecTV HR20 PVR remote which is used VERY heavily with all the commercial skipping, replaying, recording list reviewing, etc, works like a champ on 2 AA batteries for months at a time.
- MX900 Good for What?
I think the only good use for the MX900 in a very active scenario, is as a very expensive macro start up unit after which you then pick up and use your the OEM remotes for regular operation. That is, of course, ridiculous.
- What About the Harmony One?
Having spent close to $1000 on 4 failed remotes over 8 years, we are very leary of what to try next. After reading (mostly) very positive reviews, I bought a Harmony One last night, knowing it is was nearly as programmable as the MX-900 and certainly nothing like the Prontos.
As others have reported, it was a breeze to set up, looks and feels GREAT in the hand (so far at least), it's keys are very well-chosen, and it really only took 20-30 minutes to program 7 activities that use 9 devices with its wizard.
I was really surprised that I did not have to use any custom commands to tweak anything to get my units to work. This was mostly because the setup wizard includes the setup of inputs on each of your devices.
Also, it's feature of knowing what to turn off when you switch activities was really great. I could not do this on the MX900 because it is so slow execute that I could not include any more commands in its lethargic macros.
the H1's built in help to diagnose operation problems was also surprising. As a deep tech developer, I did not expect I would to say that.
So far are only Harmony One gripes are:
1. The touch screen at the top is VERY sensitive and sometimes erratic. It is easy to accidentally hit the DEVICES soft-key at the bottom of the screen which then confusingly sends you Device List screen. Reducing the sensitivity helps but then makes some touches fail.
2. REQUUIRES INTERNET ACCESS TO UPDATE
This is our biggest gripe. Even though I am a techie with always-on Internet access, it worries me that a $250 unit REQUIRES Internet access to change ANYTHING. It's just the idea, I guess, since even as a mature adult, I cannot conceive of not having access. But it still bothers me.
So, beware of the MX-900. Even if you have a perfect unit, it's slowness, hard feel, its inability to handle heavily used scenarios, and it very high battery cosumption, makes its value very questionable in our eyes, at least.
Good luck.
