I am sitting on the fence desciding whether to get a pronto, wait for the marantz or look at the new IRIQ. Has anyone compared the IRIQ with the Pronto yet?

I bought a Take Control a few weeks before Christmas. I ended up selling it and ordered a Pronto.

I first went with Take Control because:
1) Price. I paid about $290 from www.shop4.com whereas Pronto was going for $399.
2) PC software. As everyone knows, the PC software from Microsoft was really slick and it makes programming the remote very easy.

Reasons why I sold Take Control:
1) IR Range. Like most people in this forum, IR range was a major problem with my Take Control. I have a Sony RPTV. My receiver and rest of my system is about 3 feets to the right of my TV. I had to point the remote somewhere between my TV and the receiver to get the macros to work. A major problem since I bought this remote to make it easier for rest of my family to use the home theater system. I usually sit about 7 feets from my TV.

2) Philips just introduced the ProntoEdit software for free. This eliminated a major advantage Take Control has over the Pronto.

3) Price of the Pronto is as low as $299 from a few mail order companies. However, most of them do not have them in stock. I bought mine for $399 because I could not wait.

Now, I used both remotes. My two cents:
1) Pronto's IR range is much much better. I can even get it to work when I point it to the left of my TV!!!
2) Since I have not received the ProntoEdit software yet, programming a Pronto took about 3 hrs compare to about 1 hr with Take Control software. (replace about 8 remotes)
3) Touch Screen is very good on Pronto. Take Control was not as bright.
4) Pronto seems to be faster than HK Take Control especially moving between devices or pages.
5) I like the "wheel" in the HK. I also found the HK much easier to hold with one hand eventhough it is much bigger than Pronto.

I hope this email will help some of you out there. I am not saying I do not like HK. I bought it over the Pronto in the first place. But I really think there is something wrong with the IR range. I really hope HK can fix this problem

Thanks, for the info :)

David, this is addressed in some other threads that you will want to check out. Also go over to the HK thread. The responses are not nearly as universally positive as you will find here. The pronto is the way to go. IMHO.

I tried out an IRIQ at Audible Difference in Palo Alto before I went down to Bay Area Audio in Cupertino and bought a Pronto. (Yes, they do have some in stock!)

The IRIQ was pretty awful. The display is slightly smaller than the Pronto's, and doesn't backlight very well. The interface was not as flexible as far as button layouts are concerned. The Pronto is much smaller, more like the size of a Palm Pilot, and I think it has a much more appealing design.

More importantly, Pronto was incredibly easy for me to program. I'm replacing a Marantz RC-2000 Mk II with the Pronto, and I am HUGELY impressed with the ease of use, flexibility, and generally excellent design of the Pronto. The IRIQ left me completely cold. More importantly, the sales guy told me that of the six IRIQs they'd sold, they'd already had five returns. Not a good record of acceptance by any measure.

The only (and I mean ONLY) problem I'm having with the Pronto is that it doesn't want to learn the up/down value wheel commands from my Panasonic S-VHS remote. I had a hell of a time getting the RC-2000 to learn those commands, so I'm not surprised the Pronto's having trouble, too. If anyone has any ideas of how to get the Pronto to learn these commands, I'd appreciate it.

Addendum to my previous reply: I finally was able to get Pronto to learn the wheel click on my Panasonic S-VHS. It just took about fifteen repetitions of the learn/wheel-click cycle before Pronto took it and was able to play it back correctly. Now I have NO problems with the Pronto!

Jeff,
Now get out your "drawing" program and design the wheel icon and arrow icons of your dreams so they're ready to load in ProntoEdit. All you'll need to do is upload the ccf file from your Pronto, select the button for each function, change the current button to your icon, reposition on the screen, and reload back out to the Pronto. The learned command will stay intact of course.

Jack,

I'll do that, as soon as I can get a copy of the freakin' software. :)

In fact, I plan to create a bunch of graphics for my Pronto, since I am a computer artist by avocation. Maybe I'll post 'em here if they look halfway decent.

Incidentally, where can I get a serial cable for my Pronto?

Hopefully if they're that good, which they should be, you'll post them up to prontoedit.com.
As to cables, we'll again be shipping some tomorrow...is one yours?
If so, place order via pronto form at prontoedit.com, mark qtys as 0, place special note for cable only. Easy.