Slow as she goes: First, I’d like to apologize for my sporadic participation in the forums these past few weeks. I can, however, solely blame this problem on my ISP (not the one Remote Central is hosted on), which seems to have been trying very hard to make the whole "net" experience a painful one. For the past while I’ve been experiencing a 10-20% packet loss and latency of 300-500ms during the day. Three days ago they fixed the packet loss, but not the latency. The most interesting thing that’s happened during the previous six hours is sustained ping times of 600-1200ms to most of the Internet. Cable modem? That coaxial cable is looking more and more like twine!

New Pronto... from someone else! Yes, it’s true. Reports from CEDIA indicate that Yamaha was showing a version of the Philips Pronto packaged in a sturdy rubberized case. Shock proof? We can only hope! Rumors have it that this "Pront-aha" will be bundled with their high-end receivers and DLP projector. It will not be compatible with the existing Pronto docking station, so don’t toss out those rechargeable AA’s just yet. It will use the same ProntoEdit PC software package for customizing the user interface, though no word yet on which firmware feature set it will receive (Marantz or Pronto) or if, as things seem to be going, it will get its own proprietary functions.
[Talk about the Pronto & RC5000...]

100 Sony shirts ready-to-go: If you’ve been keeping an eye on the Sony forum you’ll notice our free Sony/Remote Central shirt giveaway is now complete. Thanks to all who entered – you should be getting your shirts very shortly. Enjoy!
[Talk about the Sony RM-AV2100...]

Don’t shoot the messenger: I really hope this is the last of such messages, but the recently reviewed Home Theater Master MX-1000 remote control should be shipping by month’s end. I have confirmed that it does indeed come with an impressive 4 megabytes of memory, and that the PC software will feature the ability to customize the user interface. It doesn’t look like user supplied bitmap images are yet an option, but they are being considered for future inclusion.
[Talk about the MX-1000...]