Before getting down to the business of announcing the winners, I’d first like to congratulate everyone who entered The Great Pronto Professional TSU9600 Design Contest. Although in the end only three entrants can walk away with the prizes, I was particularly impressed by the high level of refinement seen in each and every submission. There were so many worthy entries that I’m just glad that I didn’t have to make the final decision!

The contest was simple: create a new, imaginative design for the Philips Pronto Professional TSU9600 control panel using the ProntoEdit Professional software package. The winner walks away with a Philips 50" plasma television, a Philips Pronto Professional TSU9600 and a RFX9600 serial extender, with combined value of $5,797 USD. Second place receives a Pronto Professional TSU9600 and RFX9600 extender valued at $1,898 USD, while third place receives a Pronto Professional TSU9600 and RFX9400 valued at $1,598 USD. For more details on the official rules, prizes and guidelines you can view the original information given to entrants here.

After the submission process was complete, Remote Central forum members were given the opportunity to download, view and vote for their favorite entries – and it’s based on those user votes that we have come up with the winners below! For the instructions given to voters click here.

The voting process worked like this: for complete impartiality, contest entries were arranged randomly, while the author of each entry was kept hidden from view. During the voting process pages of entries were displayed on a semi-random basis, so that all entries had several chances to be on the “first” page. To ensure the integrity of this contest, all voters were required to have registered on Remote Central prior to the start of the voting process. Voters were given a total of 2 equally weighted votes. A voter could not vote for a single contest entry more than once, and it was not required that voters use all of their votes. Contest entry descriptions were provided by the authors.

The submission stage of this contest ran from December 25th, 2006 until April 8, 2007. Remote Central member voting occured from April 29th, 2007 until May 15th, 2007.

And now, without further ado, the winners!

GRAND PRIZE WINNER “Prototypes” Entry #2 Votes: 24.8% Winner of the Philips 50" Plasma TV, Pronto Professional TSU9600 control panel & RFX9600 serial extender! The idea behind Prototypes is: how might a hard-buttoned remote control look if it were designed specifically for watching TV, DVD or PVR? Change stations from an elegant chrome sphere placed on your couch table, control your DVD player via a device that is quite similar to today’s business phones, or switch your PVR with a PDA-like gadget. Or wouldn’t a keychain remote control for your receiver be pretty cool? Prototypes features elegant near-photorealistic graphics, dynamic transitions, help screens for every device and intuitive navigation. If you don’t own a TSU9600 to test this on, please don’t only watch the graphics on the simulator, but take a peek at the full resolution graphics. [ AUTHOR: André du Fresne | DOWNLOAD ] SECOND PLACE WINNER “XPronto SCUBA Edition” THIRD PLACE WINNER “Aura” Entry #5 Votes: 12.8% Winner of a Pronto Professional TSU9600 control panel & RFX9600 serial extender! The following file is based on my SCUBA-themed configuration that I use for my Marantz RC9500. However, all of the graphics have been completely redone to accommodate the Pronto TSU9600 graphics capabilities (when importing the PCF file into the Pronto Professional program all the graphics became very tiny). Because the remote uses a widescreen display, I decided to base the page navigation within each device on the XBOX 360 dashboard. You navigate the tabs (or also known as ‘blades’ for those familiar with the XBOX 360) by using the page up and down buttons located to the left of the screen. [ AUTHOR: Scott Grimes ] [ DOWNLOAD ] Entry #7 Votes: 12.0% Winner of a Pronto Professional TSU9600 control panel & RFX9400 extender! Aura is a very flexible design that can be used for personal projects as well as professional programmer’s clients. You can create any background you like to customize the template or choose one of ten different colored backgrounds I made especially for this design. There are extra pre-made pages for Blu-ray, HD-DVD, QWERTY keyboard, plus an alternative to the Lutron page for lighting control for those who like to use the IR codes. [ AUTHOR: Noel Blackman ] [ DOWNLOAD ] FOURTH RUNNER UP “Caribbean Map” FIFTH RUNNER UP “Simplify” Entry #12 Votes: 11.3% This .XCF is designed to be a file that would be delivered to an end user. It is all activity based with only the buttons and functions available that are required for using the system. It controls a simple 2 zone audio system and is an actual working file. All control of the video display is performed by macros, there is no need for a receiver or TV control page as their functions are accessed by punch through commands or the macros themselves. All items not considered critical to the daily use of the system have been hidden. [ AUTHOR: Jim Patton ] [ DOWNLOAD ] Entry #4 Votes: 9.0% You can quickly program this template for your own system or for one of your customers and is self explanatory using activity buttons that are highlighted on each source page so you will always know where you are. This design is very customer friendly and was intentionally designed to have less buttons on the source control pages by using the only the most commonly used commands for each device. There are additional sized buttons to copy and paste in case you need to include more functions or change a device page. [ AUTHOR: Noel Blackman ] [ DOWNLOAD ]

I hope that everyone interested in the Philips Pronto Professional TSU9600 will take the time to download and try all entries, both the winners shown here and those that may not have made it onto this page. Combined, they truly show what can be done with such an advanced Pronto remote control!

Visit the Pronto Professional file area!