Dom Robinson reviews

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Philips

Model: RU940 RRP: £300.00 To get the most out of the Philips Pronto RU940 you need to have plenty of remote controls to hand. I have 11 separate ones, which makes this seem ideal, but I don't sit about with *ALL* eleven neatly spread around me... since I don't always use two of them - a DVD-ROM and 3dfx Voodoo TVFM control - so only regularly use nine! As I write this review, I'll no doubt be comparing it to the One For All Mosaic remote control, but while there's one thing I can think of that it does and the Philips remote doesn't, there are plenty of reasons why the Philips scores highly over the One For All. Whereas the Mosaic limited you to controlling a set number of devices, with a set number of standard keys and macro keys and keystrokes, which itself would be limiting because you could still fill those up and still wonder why you have capacity to spare, that being because after telling the unit which devices I wanted to control and configuring extra functions for some of them - and far from the maximum of 72 keys per devices - with 94% of available memory left, apparently I had run out of space to program more keys with the 'learn keys' function, I was told by One For All, that they only expected the customisation to be used for adding a few functions and clearly not as many as I was hoping for. Where the Philips triumphs here, for my purposes at least, is that you really do have as much space as you require. The only limit is your imagination, or rather the memory size within, which should well be enough in most cases, depending on the extent of your customisation, but more about that later.

I'll get my one main niggle out of the way here though. With the Mosaic, I could easily tell it which devices I wanted to control by searching by brand name or entering a 4-digit code number, which worked for the majority of AV equipment. As far as I can see, the Pronto doesn't have this feature, but it was a simple procedure to transfer the commands to the new remote. Just for the record, the equipment I'm programming in is as follows: a Panasonic 32" widescreen TV (TXW32R4), a 1982 Ferguson 26" 4:3 TV, a Philips VR747 VCR, a Panasonic NVFJ710 VCR, a Hitachi VTFX880 VCR, a Sony STR-DB 930 receiver, a Pioneer CLD-2950 laserdisc player, a Panasonic Sky Digibox and a Nokia ITV Digital box. Not all the functions are replicated, but the though, which is where the learning function comes in. Simply and easily, it's a case of pointing the old remote at the bottom end of the Pronto and pressing the buttons as required, in turn, to inform the Pronto of the infra-red (IR) code. Get it right, you'll hear a happy beep. Don't... and you'll be burped at. Once programmed in, keys can be moved about, copied between devices and re-labelled. Labelling uses the same on-screen keyboard layout as the Mosaic, i.e. you see it first quite small, but then tapping on it will zoom in and show the keys in close-up. Since the brand name selection was done in a similar way, I can only presume there were some rights issues over the missing function. The accompanying ProntoEdit software is probably the best way for putting together your desired layouts and it's a doddle to use if you're well-versed with a PC. Yes, it may take a bit of figuring out at first, but being able to look at-a-glance at any screen within your remote and then to alter it to suit your tastes is fantastic, as is the emulator which, when your PC is connected to the remote via the RS232 cable supplied, will activate your devices as required. This software can be downloaded from the websites at the bottom of this review. If you were wondering how to power the Pronto, it takes four AA-sized batteries. To save your Duracells, you could also use NiMH rechargeable ones if you have those, or purchase a docking station. The batteries must take a bit of a pummelling from the backlit display which makes it easy to read at any time of day, but when not used for twenty seconds, or however long you've set that to be, the touch screen goes blank. Tapping it will bring everything back as it was before.

The picture on the right shows a standard layout for a VCR's transport buttons. It may look a bit dull, but we'll address that in the next section. However, the unit isn't just limited to single key-presses. The Macro facility is there to group sets of keys together which, at most, could happily switch on every single piece of AV equipment you have, including implementing small delays where pieces of equipment are not as responsive as you'd like. The ones I use the most, though, are to turn on/off the digibox-generated subtitles from both my sources. For the Nokia ITV Digital box, this is just a combination of the "up Christmas tree" and "Text", with a short delay between (and the buttons are a lot better and more responsive than an ITV Digital remote!), but the Panasonic Sky digital box is far more complicated and is hidden within a couple of menus. However, it only took a few minutes to sort this out and it works a treat. For those who want to take things further and want to switch on/off their lights, for those that can be remote-controlled, this is also possible, as is the creation of timers so you can activate your equipment at a specified time when you're out.

And so to the customisation feature. The remote comes with a standard set of keys built-in, all of which can be tweaked if you have the requisite graphics software and, as I stated earlier, the only limit is your imagination, on the whole. For those of you with the attention span of a goldfish, or for those who simply can't be arsed creating works of art and want to see what other people have done, I'd recommend you take a trip to Remote Central.com. I didn't manage to find every single piece of equipment I have on there, but there's a breath-taking amount of control sets for all kinds of AV delights and you're bound to find most of what you're after on there. I looked around for other sites too, but this one came out tops by a long stretch. Of course, if you have many things to control and go the whole hog with flashy graphics for each one, such as the example here, you will run out of memory, so you may need to be conservative with some of your hardware.

Before I sign off, I'll give a mention to the Pronto Pro (codenamed RU970), essentially the bigger brother of the unit reviewed here, but you'll need to be a very dedicated user of home cinema to afford one of these. A whacking £750 will get you this similar remote, but with a full 256-colour screen, a larger 8MB memory and four customisable buttons at the bottom instead of just two. A tilt sensor realises when you pick it up and backlights accordingly, there's more codes pre-programmed into it than any previously-released unit and it's just as programmable as the rest, with scores of control sets also available on the aforementioned Remote Central.com website. It's, quite definitely, the daddy! But you'll also need to raid his wallet in order to buy one!

Overall, I'll shed a tear when the Pronto 2MB wings its way back to Philips but it's well worth a purchase. The only major issues I have is with the brand name inputting - or rather the lack of it - and the fact I can't program the timers for my Hitachi and Philips VCRs, as it can't mimic events of keystrokes where the 'action' takes place on the remote only. The unit is an incredibly versatile one so I imagine it is possible, but it may be something that the manufacturers want to keep to themselves, which is a shame if that's the case. Of course, a minor annoyance is that I find myself spending more time looking down at the remote than you would with the individual remotes in question because you don't get the same ergonomic feel. I expected this in the first place so haven't marked it down as a result.

OVERALL