Graphics - to a degree...
The Aurora's LCD screen is similar to the one used by the MX-800, but instead of being made up of small individual dot matrix lines of text, the one on the MX-950 features greater versatility via a single large graphical dot matrix region. The effective resolution has not improved over the MX-800, so text will appear at the same size and in the same style, and any attempt at customized graphics or logos will be coarse at best (more on this later).
The entire screen opening measures 1.27" wide by 2.47" tall (3.2 cm by 6.3 cm) with a 2.75" (7.0 cm) diagonal, while the used graphical portion is somewhat smaller at 1.15" by 2.18" (2.9 cm by 5.6cm). Beneath the dot matrix section are several fixed iconic elements including a 12-hour clock, animated signal transmission icon and battery level indicator.
Let your RGB shine through.
One of the MX-950's more significant improvements over its predecessors can be seen with the backlighting. First, it doesn't use the once-popular electroluminescent (EL) panel - instead, all hard buttons are backlit by bright blue LEDs. Thanks to the laser etched button labels the effect is both modern and practical, although it does work better in some cases than others (for example the "VOL" and "CH" labels are incredibly bright, while other including [Guide] and [Menu] use such small text that light can barely escape).
The LCD screen is also backlit by LEDs, but in this case there are three different colors to choose from: red, green and blue, or a combination thereof. Each LED color can be separately adjusted to one of 17 different brightness levels (including off) for theoretically thousands of different color possibilities! It may not be a color LCD screen, but at least we can have color backlighting!
Reality, as always, is somewhat more limiting. For the best results one color should be used at full brightness, ideally two. So most users will find themselves realistically limited to primary or secondary colors: red, blue, yellow, green, purple and white. And yet the results are not quite as vibrant as one might hope. While the blue and green LEDs are exceptionally bright, the red portion is quite dim. This results in solid red backlighting being useless except for use in a photo lab darkroom, yellow being more of a warm light green, and a combination of all three colors - which if I remember correctly should produce white - ironically looks more like the same electroluminescent aqua blue shade that they were trying to improve on.
Options on the remote allow the hard button and LCD backlighting to be enabled or disabled individually, while the amount of time they remain active can be configured to 10, 30, 60, 120 or 300 seconds. The screen's backlighting is even and consistent with no bright or dark spots (a notable feat for LEDs) and the overall brightness can be configured to 17 different intensities independent of the color generation levels. The LCD screen does not reverse to light text on a dark background as some previous URC remotes have done.
| 
Previous page
