Well after the second mortgage went through, I'm proud to say I am the father of a happy new bouncing baby... ProntoPro!! Woo yeah "ahhhhh" - the crowd goes wild, but oh my aching wallet (even dealer cost is painful to swallow, but oh so much cheaper than that Crestron I was considering -- and in spite of a lot of gripes I see on RC about ProntoEdit and RC5000 setup, a whole helluva lot easier to setup and program.

The RF extender is only about the size of a pack of cigarettes or so. Haven't had a chance to play with that yet.

I worked furiously through the weekend to get my CCF ready. Though I had started from scratch weeks ago (the day PPE became available here -- thanx, Daniel) on new color graphics, with the urgency of knowing it would be in today, I simply overlaid my new color interface over my current 1MB RC5000 ccf and aliased every button in the whole damn thing in ProntoPro Edit and hid most pages of my old remote over the weekend. Even with two large CCFs stuffed in there with 35 pages for CD changer, 14 pages of very large channel icons (average about the size of a quarter), and the piece de resistance: over 80 pages of Sunday Ticket buttons displaying 300 variations of the 32 NFL helmets in matchups and I still have...58% free memory! If I do the math right, the Pro has over 10 times the memory of that Crestron I was considering at a fourth the price.
It is way way easier to read and see than the B&W versions. I'll have no problem selling these programmed custom with RF station for $1400 to people who were ready to pay $800 for B&W IR model.
However...
The charger hookup sucks. I hope it still works after you break those little feet off, because you can count on at least 3 times as many people breaking those off as crack the screens. You have to be an idiot to push the screen so hard you crack it, but I've had them (about 1 in 15). I fear that mechanism. The first two times I (extremely carefully) took it off the charger, I heard a snap and shuddered. It's a stupid-*ss way to design the thing. I would have preffered a wall wart plug like the base station has that you just jack in the side before I would have come up with this idotic accident-waiting-to-happen contraption.
Also, it's a little tricky getting the brightness/contrast set so it doesn't streak or bleed, but tap on the rc5000 screen and just tilt your Pro and gasp at the difference.
The battery cover flexes noticably when your fingers curl around it, and it locks in with a snap-lock like a cheap remote that could be broken off, where the B&W versions have a nice solid battery cover.
I like the finish much better than my rc5000. It's less slippery and the rc5000 is very unforgiving about scratches, and customers who 'clutch' their remote a lot tend to wear the paint off. I got a small drop of something or other on my rc5000 and when I wiped it off, there went a little paint with it.
After reading all the trouble some people have had with their PronotPros, I was a bit scared, but I had my CCF all ready to go. I had a dinner engagement less than an hour after work, so I came in, opened the box, fired up the computer, jacked it in, and Presto! Works like a charm -- all those new color buttons executing those old macros. It's creepy -- no debugging, no codes to learn...What the hell am I gonna do now??? My head installer was right. "You'll just look at the thing and say 'Wow. That's cool, huh?'"
Not to worry though in a week or so, I'll look at about half the pages and think "Jeez, that's tacky. How did I think that was cool? Better change that...

Well, time to check the manual of that RFX6000 before I curl up to sleep...


On the sofa.

Well, overall it sounds like you do indeed love the remote! For all the programming gripes, the Pronto really shines in color. But I too wonder how that docking station connector ever got through usability/durability testing. :-)

This is the first response I can think of that was overwhelmingly positive. The rest have been really critical. Even Daniel's review, essentially positive, was frank in its discussion of the shortcomings. And that workaround? My god, for such an expensive product to need such a basic "fix" is really a stunner.

Daniel, the test engineer responsible for the docking function for the 6000 was out sick the day this was scheduled to be evaluated. At least that is the story I would tell if this was my job...

What "useability/durability testing?

Phillips says: "What is 'usability/durability testing'? In fact, what is 'testing'?"

One thing I noticed today. I only had a few minutes to play with the RF this morning and I noticed 2 strange things about the RFX6000. The first is that channel macros that work fine with IR seem to need some longer delays on RF -- 607 becomes 67, etc. Also the manual tells you to change RF channel if the led stays lit. Anywhere I plug it in, the red light comes on and stays lit -- on every RF channel. Can plasma TVs emit RF noise? I even plugged it in back in my repair dept. and the light stays lit. Makes me wonder if the macro problem is from RF interference. I'll have to take it home and try on my system tonight.
Also, my sales manager pointed out that the screen only responds when you use a fingernail, not your finger. I recalibrated the screen, but it seems the same. I usually use my fingernail anyway, so I hadn't noticed. Sometimes with the RC5000s, I feel like the screens are a bit unresponsive when new, but I usually have figured that it was just that the customers haven't git the knack of it yet, but there have been times when I thought it just wasn't broken in yet. I've never had a customer with an ongoing complaint about this. Does anyone else think this is the case? or have any thoughts on the RFX6000 LED question?

Yes they do, I have heard of it with other RF devices (such as IR repeaters or other remotes that do IR to a base station)


Could be, but it could also possibly be the same reason that makes you need longer delays if you use the emulator

No, I figured out the macro problem. The file was for my RCA dss at home which takes .1 second delays between digits for channel macros, but I was working a DTC100 in the store which in my experience needs .2 second delays.

The light stays on all the time on the RFX6000 even at my house, but it seems to work fine (It does blink when it sends though). About the RFX6000, II noticed two things that I'm curious if anybody else noticed.

1. I don't seem to be able to get RF commands on the home page. The home page will only work IR. Even when I globally set the remote to RF and set each device and macro group to RF, home buttons are IR. Also, as I feared, you cannot mix and match RF and IR buttons within a macro or on the same page -- I guess this would have required a major overhaul to the architecture of the remote to provide this feature. In limited testing, the blaster hits a very wide area and has good range so far, but I discovered that my testing last night was irrelevant because:
2. I discovered that my TSU6000 talks to my RCA cones just like they were RFX6000s!! Late in the evening I was trying to confirm that the Pro doesn't send RF and IR simulteaneously, and with my RFX6000 unplugged, I discovered I could control my system from the back porch!! I neglected to disconnect my cones! I have a four-way Crestron IR splitter block with four dual emitters jacked into an RCA cone and it seems to work with my TSU6000. Later, as I played with this discovery, it became intermittent, but then my ProntoPro's battery died, so I am still not sure if this is a reliable alternative. Of course, I would imagine this may not work on all RF channles of the Pro, and wouldn't allow for a multiple extender configuration, but is a super cheap add-on compared with $200 retail for the RFX6000.

If anybody knows how to make buttons on the home page RF, let me know. I hope I won't have to make the home page a dummy page and put my actual input-select-home-page within it's own dummy device group, but I'm sure that would work if necessary.

Also, I'm staring to get used to the battery latch now, but I still wince every time I tajke it off the charger.

Well I've been working the Pro for several hours now using the RCA RF extenders in place of the RFX6000 with my all devices set to RF and works like a charm. The intermittent function must've been from the extremely weak battery. I can work my cd player from out in the front yard -- no sweat.

Steve, UPS paid me a visit as well yesterday with a package just like yours. And with all of the scarry things I have been reading on the posts, I didn't know just what to expect. I was still very pleased with what I found in the box. The screen, albeit a little "smeary" at times, is FAR SUPERIOR to my 5000i. The crazy connector is another story, as so many here have mentioned. The thing I dislike most is you can't pick up the remote with one hand like all previous versions...its now a 2-hander.
Aaron kindly emailed me his pro ccf so I could see some color images on the screen and he has many. They look remarkably good. He has downloaded small (110 x 110) images of CD covers and indexed his cd collection using the images and works very well. I may adopt the same basic idea in my ccf.
All in all, I am happy with my "investment", although I have discovered one small problem (and it may be me). I have tried the "revert" sequence described in the manual to get back to the factory ccf in the remote but it does nothing. When I hit the button in the setup screen, nothing happens. Have to figure that one out.
Regards,
Wayne

I noticed that when you try to change and RF device back to IR in the mode menu, it doesn't work. Maybe as with your revert problem, there is limited function in the mode menu once you have put a ProEdit-modified CCF in the remote. I am pretty happy with my purchase. You are right about the difficulty of one hand operation. I was used to that on my rc5000 as well. What is wierd to me is getting used to not having to aim it anywhere. I'm learning to hold it up so you can see it, but it's taking some getting used to. By the way. if you have any of those RCA IR extenders, they will work in place of the RFX6000 in a pinch. Try it out.