I’ve had the new Philips Pronto expert TSU9600 for a bit over a week now so I believed it was time for some preliminary impressions.
The Hardware choosing it up for the very first time, the system is most likely smaller as well as lighter than you’d imagine. The surface is glossy piano black with a silver cleaned impact surround. The stylus stores inside the system like a PDA or SmartPhone, however it doesn’t lock into location extremely well, although I haven’t needed to utilize it so far apart from calibrating the screen on at first booting the device. The 3.7″ 640×480 (VGA) screen is beautiful, as you’d expect in an £800 remote, as well as it sits flush with its surround which assists to provide it a excellent viewing angle. The tilt sensor brings on the backlight when its lifted just like the Sonos controller. There are over 20 difficult secrets around the system which are on the whole excellent. It’s excellent to have a appropriate cursor pad in specific when utilizing it with gadgets like TiVo. Strangely the scroll sound around the cursor pad is currently only utilized for Escient media servers as well as is un-addressable in the software application for any type of other device. I’ve likewise discover the difficult secrets directly under the screen for Play, stop pause etc are a bit as well small.
Click pic For larger Version
Click pic For larger Version
Click pic For larger Version
Click pic For larger Version
The charging base is set on a remove acrylic slab as well as it is lit with a white LED which looks rather nice. A red LED likewise glows when the system is on the cradle as well as accepting charge. The handbook suggests keeping the system on it’s base station at all times when it’s not in use, in truth I’ve had no problems at all with battery life in spite of heavy utilize while setting it up.
The 9600 ships with support for the Escient Fireball Media Servers as well as Lutron RadioRa illumination as well as curtain controls. ideally Philips will add to the variety of expert devices supported out of the box in the future. envision the possibilities if they would release protocol info so individuals might produce their own plugins to manage the significant variety of illumination as well as wise house products with the units developed in wifi capabilities.
The software application The system ships with a pre-configured data for either a single space or multi-room setup. utilizing this common data is a great starting point for producing your own. producing your own Pronto configuration is a bit like recording a piece of music or editing a video; you never truly surface it, you just get to a point where you are happy sufficient to release it, even though you understand you might go on adding stuff as well as tweaking it quite much for ever. After costs around 12 hours on my configuration I now have a system that can be utilized by all the family, including the six year old. With half a lots devices, graphics logos of TV channels as well as lots of macros there’s still 90% of the Pronto’s 256 meg of RAM free.
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At the heart of the system is the “Factory Database” with over 3,000 brands of equipment. The database still needs some work categorising gadgets as rather a great deal are still listed under generic code table names rather than design numbers. However, I discovered every single gadget I needed in this database, including those for an eight year old Seleco CRT projector meaning I didn’t have to discover a single code for my setup! You copy codes from this factory DB into “My Database” which then makes them accessible for programming.
Philips are making a great deal of the “Designed by installers” element of the new remote as well as like the harmony range, this has led to the activity based technique of manage rather than just gadget control. In other words you introduce activities like “Watch online TV” or “Listen to Music”. This makes excellent sense as well as is precisely the method we utilized our old Pronto RU890 (just required into retirement by the arrival of the TSU9600 after almost 7 years sterling service).
The new Pronto edit expert software application is the very first I have utilized where you cannot download the configuration data from the remote back into the PC. This is supposedly to protect installers from having their work copied. An installer can likewise do a “pack as well as go” to turn the configuration data (new .XCF extension) into an .exe so they can be emailed to a customer. This method the end individual just runs the data to update their Pronto, without ever having to see the Pronto edit expert software. What ever method you look at it you there’s a great deal of prospective for heartache if you don’t keep a backup copy of your .XCF data in a risk-free place.
The new software application utilizes .png data for its graphics which are high high quality as well as support transparency. Philips have just released a new gallery which includes more TV station icons for the US, UK as well as Europe. a number of special navigation commands are in PEP, one of the truly useful ones is “Browse Back” which enables the remote to jump back to the panel you came in from. This simplifies a great deal navigation problems that utilized to happen in older models. one more new function is support for wave data (.wav, 44 kHz, 16 bit, mono). You can now play a noise impact of your option on a key-press or in a macro etc.
PEP is a Windows only bundle (no Mac or Linux support) as well as currently it won’t run under Windows Vista, however with the Vista introduce only days away now surely it can’t be long up until a new version is released that will repair that.
Extenders The genuine power of the TS9600 includes the addition of its two extender products.
The RFX9400 Wireless Extender provides 4 individually addressable IR ports as well as as much as 16 of these extenders can be incorporated in a single network. The remote can interact directly to the wireless extender or via a WiFi gain access to point/router. The Prontos wifi is of the 802.11g flavour as well as includes support for 64 as well as 128 bit WEP, however not WPA. You can provide the system a fixed IP as well as it likewise supports DHCP. There is no browser or any type of other Web utilize of the system currently (unlike the old iPronto). This seems like a wasted opportunity, particularly as I might manage my Sonos system with the Pronto utilizing one of the house brew web interfaces that are around now. however with the remote running a flavour of the Linux OS there’s a possibility that somebody will be able to hack the system if Philips don’t choose to add a browser themselves in the future.
The RFX9600 advanced Serial Extender is a hardwired extender that plugs into your wired LAN as well as fits into a 19″ rack. It includes wired discrete manage (RS232) ports. currently these are one-way serial ports however it appears the hardware is two-way capable as well as ideally Philips will allow this in a future firmware upgrade. The RFX9600 likewise includes power sensing as well as relay changing (4 relay outputs) for curtain as well as projector screen manage for example. likewise included are 4 individually addressable IR ports which is a god send for anyone wanting to run several sky boxes for example.
The video Here’s a bit YouTube video of the remote in action. most of the delay with the “System On” macro comes from my LG LCD TV being sluggish to start. You can make out the animation on the screen during the power off macro at the end which is made up of a number of different screen which you put into your macro at different point to get the impact of the development bar moving.
Conclusion £800 buys you a great deal of set these days, perhaps a nice 37″ LCD television for example. however then once again £800 doesn’t buy you much in the method of a colour touchscreen controller from any type of of the huge name house automation companies, as well as that’s where Philips scores with the TSU9600. It’s a high quality gadget that, with an extender, can ended up being the centre of an entire wise house system. It didn’t just take the innovation award for nothing at the 2007 consumer electronics Show.
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Click pic For larger Version
+ exceptional VGA TouchScreen
+ significant database of IR codes
+ Wired as well as Wireless Extenders
+ Over 20 difficult Buttons
+ Return command – to jump back to previous panel
+ Ships with high high quality configuration file
+ support for custom noise files
+ includes Dock/Charger
+ USB connection (not serial)
– Play, Stop, pause difficult buttons as well small
– Doesn’t have a browser
– Stylus doesn’t lock in properly
– Doesn’t work in Vista currently
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Last update on 2021-10-04 / affiliate links / pictures from Amazon product marketing API