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I love having a daughter. No, really. There are times though…

Like last night. She likes to play with the remote control and normally everything is ok. Occassionally we have to get it out of her hand because she is holding it by the volume up button, but by-and-large all is well. Last night she dropped it for the 4294th time. Since she had dropped it 4293 times before, I didn’t think much of it. I just picked it up and put the battery cover back on it. Later that night, my wife was trying to turn the system off and I hear “Jere, el control es roto.” (Jere, the control is broken) Lo and behold the LCD touchscreen had several lovely cracks in it. The actual LCD was fine, but the touch surface was completely unusable. Which, on a remote control dominated by the LCD is not good. We turned everything off, she went to bed, and I hit the internet.

Since the control was fine except the touchscreen, I knew I could download the program (that I spent literally days programming) and upload it to a new one. But wait! Maybe it’s time for a new control. There are a variety of things that I’m not thrilled about when it comes to the ProntoNG. The touch screen is great for flexibility and I can make it display anything I want. The software lets me enter IR codes in hex if I want (great for creating custom codes for an HTPC). It really is a good remote control. The downside of the touchscreen and the limited number of hard buttons is that you often have to look at the control to use it. Even after a long time using it, I still found myself not hitting the key I wanted.

So, off I go to Remote Central. By the way, if you are in the market for a universal remote control, this is the site for you! After perusing their VERY thorough reviews, I found that the one I liked was the URC MX-900. The review is here. According to the (again, excellent) forums there, the software to configure the MX-900 isn’t available to us mere mortals. Sure, you can get a one time download, but you have to be a “professional installer” to get updates. Luckily, there is a Sound Advice nearby that is an authorized dealer and agreed to share the updates with me.

Now I have my shiny new control, my broken old control and software. I start programming the control fully expecting to spend the rest of the day working on it. That was at 2pm. It is now 4pm and I’m done. It was an excellent experience.

First off, I didn’t have to deal with graphics. That saved a LOT of time.
Second, it had the codes for everything I had with 2 exceptions. It didn’t have my custom codes and it didn’t have the right codes for the game command and the input select command for my TV.

They (URC) allow you to drag and drop IR codes from Pronto configuration files. Is that not brilliant? I just dragged the codes to the buttons I wanted and it worked great first time.

Another benefit of the MX-900 is the dual nature of all the buttons. They can act as either “normal” buttons, meaning they have one code (or macro) assigned to them, or they can act as “push and hold” buttons. The push and hold buttons have one code (or macro) if you push and release the button and another code (or macro) if you push and hold the button for a configurable amount of time. This is extremely useful and a brilliant idea.

So there you have it. My opinion of the Universal Remote Control MX-900: Brilliant.

Take care,
Jere