I must have seen a thread about this in the past but I can't find it- so many postings on new prontos with dim screens.
My trusty pronto turns 9 months old and it's screen has much lower contrast now. Is this common? What to expect for the months to come? (I know, I know, the color Pronto :) )

[Link: remotecentral.com]

Do you mean the batteries are getting weak or just that the contrast has changed?
I have to adjust the contrast on mine. It seems to lighten up all on it's own, so I just lower it. It only happens occasionally though.

In terms of overall contrast, I find my nearly new RC5000 (still the old model though) and very much used Pronto are exactly the same.

I mean a slight but distinguishable fainter overall appearance of the screen, regardless of battery state or contrast setting.It occured gradually, but mostly in the last couple of months. Notice that I have been rather conservative regarding lcd and backlight timeout settings. The remote is still quite operational, I just have to hit the backlight button more often than I used to. I wouldn't like it to get any fainter however. Has anybody noticed this as the pronto gets older or after the last firmare upgrade?

Just an interesting aside that is slightly off topic. I bought a 5000 (old model) about two weeks ago and it had a problem. When I brought it back, the dealer only had 5000i's, which I upgraded to. But I noticed that the contrast was a lot poorer than the original 5000 (you couldn't adjust it so that with the backlight on, you could see any real difference between the two shades of gray). It also had more glare, which worsened the problem. Marantz just told me that they recently changed touch screen vendors. I looked at another 5000i and 5000 (demo) at the store, and they both confirmed my observation. So beware that if you do ever have a 5000 screen replaced, you're liable to get a new one that already suffers from reduced constrast.