Some discussion here at the moment about programmable remotes.

I started off with a Philips Pronto but eventually grew irritated with too few hard buttons. After some net research I came upon the Home Theatre Master products and imported an MX700 from the USA.

I've had it for over 2 years now and find its flexibility brilliant. Macros etc are easy using a PC and its combination of hard buttons & programmable ones has met every need in this complex system.

The Aussie Dollar is good cf the US at the moment so these can be imported at reasonable cost. I highly comment you shop at
http://www.bluedo.com/bluedocgi/products.cgi
They have "Open Box Specials" which are 100% perfect (I bought another unit this year for a second system so can personally vouch for their service & product quality). The MX700 costs $178.41USD = $240AUD + around $35 freight.

Have a geek at
http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/mboar...master/list.cgi
for a site discussing this & other remotes.

I'm happy to answer any queries anyone has on the MX700 either on or off board.

John

I don't think you will get too much opposition from other HTM users.

Apart from the ergonomics of the product (where 1-handed operation is possible), the feature of these that I think is most important (and often neglected) is that for those of use without the PC-editing suite, your config is not lost even if your batteries run out and are not replaced for months. Battery life is also fantastic and leaves all LCD-based devices for dead.

I have only 2 issues:

1) These shoudl be available in Australia for a reasonable price (I also purchased from BlueDo)
2) I would swap the position of the Channel/Volume buttons which for some reason seem to me to be the wrong way round

Yes, we really are not encouraged to shop locally are we!

On battery life I find it only so-so, maybe because I use rechargeable NiH AAAs & they do not have the capacity of normal AAAs. No real hassle as I use 2 sets and just cycle between them.

The position of that volume button has never bothered me and, on CDs & DVDs I program the channel buttons to change tracks up & down.

The MX850 is an improvement re the "Enter" button being a distinct one and not an attached centre one of the joysick. I never use it but have the "ENT" button right bottom programmed for "Enter".

The second one I got was an MX800 but should have opted for another of the less expensive MX700 as I have not used the RF functions. I note that there is an MX950 coming out next month which has function capacity for over 200 remotes. The mind boggles about who would want that!

John

I recently upgraded from the MX-500 to the MX-850 + MRF-250 RF Base Station and I must say the the 850 is sensational! I got it new from "dougthetheaterman" via eBay for $420AUS landed!

You did well. Via bluedo.com the same thing cost me $396. The difference between our costs is easily accounted for by currency fluctuations :-)

John

Damn, I checked bluedo first and it was gonna cost me about $630AUS landed. There were no 850+250 bundles in their open box specials. Did you only buy the remote?

No, it had the complete works - 250 receiver station etc. Ironically I'm not using that function so, as I posted earlier, an MX700 would have done fine.

The reason is that I intended to use the 800 in the main system & move the 700 to the secondary one. However I had so much trouble moving files across I gave up. There is a bug somewhere in the software. People tried to help but nothing seemed to work. So I kept the 700 where it works fine & my wife uses the 800 in a second system where she can watch Oprah & other junk during the day.

John

I'm one of many who are jumpingh ship wth the MX series (MX500 in my case) moving over to Harmony brand.

Yes Foxtail, they look appealing just as the MX500 looks a bit clumky (but does the job). I was attracted to the Harmony myself but research suggested it was not as good as the Home Theatre Master 700 & 800 series. There were people reporting on remote central.com that they tried the Harmony but changed to the HTM.

However I'm not trying to knock the Harmony as I have not experienced one. The HTM was so much easier as I was familiar with the software. As I get older I'm less enthusiastic about learning new computer tricks. The old ones baffle me enough!

John

I originally purchased the MX-700, but was disatisfied with the backlighting - ok in a dark room, but in a half lit room, I found it unreadable. I managed to return it and upgrade to a MX-850, which has better backlighting (lightblue background, black characters), and a few minor differences. I did however prefer the look and feel of the MX-700, but I'm quite happy with the 850 regardless. Its just unfortunate that the HTM database has virtually none of my equipment listed. It's quite an esoteric collection, so maybe that's it!

Yes, I found the same thing and had to learn all the codes in the 700.

However this is where I also found problems with the 800 - it did not learn as easily as the 700. First I tried transferring files learned from the 700 but when that failed I had to face up to learning them all over again in the 800. But I struck difficulties with a couple of components so after several fruitless hours I gave up ideas of using the 800 in the main system. To this day I have no idea what was wrong. Downloading updated files did not help. Seems like a bug got embedded somewhere :-(

John

The hardware inside the MX-850 is a significant upgrade over previous models and the 850 can now handle RC-5 & RC-6 spec IR codes and handle parity codes as well. I couldn't figure out why I was having issues learning some codes until a US based installer told me to capture the difficult codes while not connected to the PC.

You just use the good old MAIN+ENT for 10 secs then Learn and once you have learned the troublesome codes, you just Upload your results to your PC and you'll never have the issue again. This method is particularly good if you get an RC that the 850 doesnt like the auto-repeat codes while connected to the PC.

Another option that works a treat is getting pronto CCF files from remotecentral.com and importing the learned codes via the universal browser.