August's contest!
By now, you all will have noticed that Remote Central’s July contest is over. Despite a relatively easy question answered by our then-latest review, only half of all entrants answered correctly! From those we’ve picked the winners – so see who won the Acoustic Research home theater speaker package, Kenwood 2-way radio kit, UCommand 626 remote, Harman/Kardon DAL-150 audio transceiver, RCA RCU1000B remote, or Sony RM-VL1000 remote.

This August we’ve got a great contest for you, with many prizes to be won. Partnered with the fantastic people at AVSmarts.com, we’re pleased to offer everyone the chance to win a Garmin eMap GPS unit, Evolve Guide Remote, pair of Kenwood FM 2-way radios, Crisp Solutions UCommand 626 remote, Hot Link Pro IR distribution system, Sony RM-VL1000 remote or one of eight Zenith ZEN-425 remotes! Enter today!

New Yamaha RAV-2000 model...
Yamaha has recently made slight changes to the version of the RAV-2000 that ships with the RX-Z1 receiver. Called the RAV-2000Z1, the hardware is identical, but Yamaha has enlarged the memory region where user files are stored. The RAV-2000Z1 has increased from 444kb available space to a more useful 772kb. They obtained this additional space by shrinking the code database from about 640kb to just under half, essentially removing European codes.

No new version of RAVedit has been released. Instead, Yamaha provides the RAVSelect utility, which modifies (back and forth) several RAVedit files to support both versions. Yamaha warns that downloading a RAV-2000Z1 file to a RAV-2000 is not a good thing, so unless you actually have a RAV-2000Z1 please don’t use this utility.

Absolutely, positively massive file area update!
It’s been quite a while since our last file area update! With the recent introduction of the upgraded database program, it’s become much easier to determine which files are new. Still, I’ve found that many users prefer news updates to see what’s hot.

We’ll begin with the Philips Pronto file area, which covers the TS-1000, TSU2000, TSU6000, RU890, RU940, RU970, Marantz RC5000, RC5000i, RC5200, RC9200, Onkyo CHAD and Yamaha RAV-2000 models. New or updated complete system CCF files, for both color and black and white remotes, are now available from:

Adrian Bellwood Alex Vallat André du Fresne Andrew Jewell Andy Ehm Arnie Burke Bryan Zada Carlton Bale Chris Lee Chris Williams

Claudio Santulli Colin Reeve Dale Crawford Dave Nibeck David Armour David Byrne David Chalif David Loew David Williams Dede Ayache

Derek Stutsman Drury Woodson Duncan Ross Eric Labuda Fabrice Lainé Francois Lafaix Frank Tartaglione Geoff Leonard George Marantis

Greg Hamilton James Dougherty Janusz Kuszak Jason Bihun Jason Winspear Jeff Boen John Corkery John Pechulis Julian Croot

Kevin Sills Kim Aubry Lee Nevo Marc Jones Mark Easton Markus Emmert Matthew Elton Maximilien Rexx Mr. M Nate Goplen

Neils Natic Nicholas D. Satullo Nicholas Reinking Nigel Avey Ofer LaOr Pat Hall Paul Bess Paul Ghosh Paul Reid Phil Ayling

Phil Hodgins Phil Kitlinger Reiner Unsinn Rhob Webber Richard Bekker Richard Bellanger Richard Chapple Robert Johnson Romain Heilig

Ronnie Wimberly Russell Burke Ryan Cox Sascha Zimmermann Shawn Szilezy Thorsten Schwarz Tom Lendway Yves Geltmeyer

Several new useful user-written utilities are also available:

ProntoGen v2.0: Generates CCF databases for Sony 200-400 disk jukeboxes.
SNL Sony CD Supercharger v1.0: Adds functionality to SuperNudeList for Sony megachangers.
CCF Tools v0.52/0.99: Includes the useful CCF Compiler & Decompiler, CCF Dumper and CCF Optimizer programs.
Channel Magic: Generates station macro groups from a master channel file.
IRLite: Converts AMX IR Library files (.IRL) to Pronto hex code.
ImgRep: Replaces the Pronto's built-in (and normally unchangable) GUI.
Yamaha Extended IR Codes: A full listing of all available extended IR codes for Yamaha receivers.
Communicating with the Pronto: Documentation on how to communicate over the serial port with the Pronto.

The Philips ProntoNEO and Marantz RC3200 file area continues to grow, with recent complete system NCF uploads from:

Aaren Jensen Alex Kada Andreas Kurth Bob Held Bob Hopwood Chris Gorman Chris Tideswell Cory Philips Dick Kurfuerst Doug Roswold Gabe Breeman Gadget Geek Kark Buck James Wallace Jason Duffy Jeff Willis Joe Charles John Hoffman

John Young Max Power Mike Juday Mike Mathos Nathan Palmer Peter Isbrucker Quan Richard Hunger Robert Ronny Hendrichs Ryan Dittamore Ryan Wiesehan Steve Gubala The Goat Tim Krug Todd Upton Willem Kaar

Be sure to also check out the Neo's Utilities & Manuals section, where you'll find new versions of the NeoDiff, NeoHacker and Pronto2Neo programs, along with a handy document on the ProntoNEO's IR format!

As always, these file areas can only exist with your uploads! Click here to send us your Pronto-related files, or click here for ProntoNEO files.