25 out of 25 people found this review helpful.
The Pronto will save your system!
Date of Review: Oct 2, 1999
The Philips Pronto is a $400 retail, ~$300 mail-order programmable remote control. It ships with a PC software package and a serial interface, so design work can be done with a mouse and keyboard and downloaded. It offers 7 physical buttons and a touch-screen LCD that allow "panels" to be designed and laid out that match the components in your system. The size is slightly bigger than a Palm III (thicker, but not really heavier) and the form is curvy and feels very intuitive.
In my opinion, if you've spent more that $1500 on your other stereo components and media (don't forget, CDs are at least $10 a pop :-) or you have a spouse who has ever uttered the words "How do I turn all this on/off?" then this remote is a MUST for you. It will simplify your life and make your system approachable by others in your family and visitors as well. I read all the reviews and have owned at least 4 other "universal remotes" or "learning remotes" and the Philips Pronto is so far above them that a comparison is actually hard to make.
As of today, October '99, when you first get this remote, there will be some extra setup time involved because Philips doesn't ship pre-packaged panels for all other devices. Your choices are to design the panels yourself for each of your components, or download someone else's from the ProntoEdit website. The ProntoEdit software offers a very nice GUI to choose pre-designed buttons, insert your own IR commands through the learning IR port on the bottom of the Pronto, and organizing your panels as you see fit. The ProntoEdit website offers a location where people have uploaded their handcrafted panels for most of the components you already own. The only problem with this is that they don't necessarily use the same button palettes ("galleries") or design style so if you patch yours together from other people's work, it may not be visually consistent. Given the ease of doing this, I chose to have a slightly inconsistent look for some of my panels.
Collecting IR commands can be done through three mechanisms. Philips ships a database of IR commands with the ProntoEdit software, but due to legal/cost issues (I'm assuming), it only includes Philips components and is therefore not useful to those of us without even one (before this wonderful remote). The second way is to use the IR learning port on the bottom of the remote. The nice thing is that this can be done while the Pronto is connected to the PC and running the ProntoEdit software. The final way involves downloading other people's panel collections (or configuration files called *.ccf files) and cut-n-pasting either panels or just the IR codes into your configuration. One of the biggest advantages of sharing codes this way is that someone, somewhere has figured out the discrete ON/OFF codes for every component I own. This solves the biggest problem with all other learning/macro remotes I've ever had because it avoids the use of the evil "Power" button which toggles on/off. Without discrete codes, tracking the on/off state of components was nearly impossible, so macros could never assume anything. My "WatchDVD" (et al) and "All off" macros work 100% of the time for me, 'nuff said.
The ProntoEdit software is a very good first cut. The simulator they supply allows you to try out your design on a life-sized, perfect looking, perfect-sounding simulation of the Pronto. The simulation's only (small) shortcoming is that with my P2-400, the simulator runs faster than the remote. There are clearly many things that could be improved in the software and IR database and revisions have been somewhat slow to come out of Philips. On the other hand, the revisions are free and they are for a consumer device so the QA level required should be higher and my experience has reflected that. You can download the ProntoEdit software free without owning the Pronto, so it gives a great opportunity to try it without buying it, although you do have to register and at least make up some personal info to get to the download page. I believe in the future, if Phillips invests appropriately in this area, that they'll have a trivial cookie-cutter setup for all components that even a PC novice could set up, but its not quite there yet.
Now that I've discussed the virtual features to death, the physical ones are also important. It runs on 4 AA batteries and I've had to replace them once (after about 3 months). You can buy an optional charging station and rechargeable batteries, but I don't see the need. The backlight is room-light-sensitive and is as close to perfect as I've ever seen from any LCD device. The physical buttons can be programmed to do anything but the 5 round ones on the right side are labeled (mute, channel +/-, volume +/-) so probably shouldn't be made something entirely different. The two bottom buttons can have LCD labels associated with them and can be set up for anything. The touch-screen is also the best I've ever tried and seems very reliable/accurate. There are some aspects of the screen design that can't be changed and while it isn't bad, there are some aspects I wish I could change. On the other hand, the real-time clock is always in the upper right and since my TV doesn't show time by default, I use this feature to find out how far past my bedtime I've gone while watching movies. The IR output of the Pronto is ALSO the strongest I've ever seen. I have a light-colored wall about 17 feet opposite the components and I can aim the Pronto away and the 20-25' reflected IR is enough to reliably control my components.
In conclusion, I've owned alot of electronic toys in the past 25 years and I can't think of any that I would recommend as strongly as this one. I have never seen any remote (even one made for a specific device) that is as easy to use as the Pronto. It's a lot to spend on a remote, but for the first time, I think its worth it.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Philips or anything related to the Pronto.
http://www.prontoedit.com
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