Philips Pronto Professional TSU9600
September 13, 2006 - And now the event that many have been waiting for! With months of lead-up teaser advertisements and details being slowly doled out, we can finally bring you details on the new Philips Pronto Professional TSU9600 universal remote control – or as they call it now, a Control Panel.
The TSU9600 is the latest remote from the development team in Belgium and, despite its appearance, is far more than an “enhanced” RC9800i. For one thing, the LCD display sports an exceptional full VGA 640x480 resolution even though it is still a standard 3.7” diagonal. This is like a high definition display in the palm of your hand... it really is stunning to see in person! But you won’t always have to use the touchscreen, since the Pronto Professional also comes with a total of 24 hard buttons, most backlit by blue LEDs, including a 5-way menu cursor, 5 custom labeled buttons below the display, and a rotating ring for use with media servers. The TSU9600 also features plenty of capacity with 64 megabytes of operating memory and 64 megabytes of flash memory and, although it is not spelled out explicitly in the specifications, is blazingly fast to use.
The TSU9600 comes with a rechargeable lithium ion battery with 2100 mAh capacity (compare that to the TSU7000’s original paltry 600 mAh NiMH battery) and a snazzy vertical docking station that illuminates a transparent baseplate with white LEDs. The remote includes USB 2.0 connectivity for speedy file transfers. Optional to the Pronto Professional are two different WiFi-based extenders, a basic model for wired IR emitters, and a deluxe model that offers advanced capabilities including RS232 control and power status sensors. The built-in wireless system can also be used with Escient music servers and Lutron lighting systems.
Command management is improved with the new remotes – not only does the ProntoEdit Professional software come with a great built-in database of codes, but for the first time users can now create their own fully functional database of devices. Code learning has been significantly enhanced and now covers a frequency range of 17kHz all the way up to 1MHz! Supporting this is a new optional SuperHex IR code format that offers greater detail over the traditional Pronto Hex format (which has become somewhat of an industry standard) for troublesome codes.
ProntoEdit itself has been given an overhaul and, while the overall interface will be familiar to anyone who has used a version of ProntoEdit before, a lot of effort has been put into making it quicker and more efficient to use. Backwards compatibility is excellent, with full support for importing of older CCF and PCF files. And no more beeps – the remote now supports WAV sound file playback.
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