A much maligned piece of kit, but.......

Ok, i bought this with much caution, many forum posts complained about the unit being junk and functions not working as advertised. Now on of the main reasons i got this was that i like gadgets and have a fetish for touch screens.

The unit itself - a refurb for 159 dollars, looks like new. nicely made with clear 65k colour screen.

My home cinema gear.

Dell Xps 720 Pc running vista media centre
Marantz sr4001 amplifier
Marantz dv6600 hdmi dvd player
Lg 42" Lcd
Infocus Screenplpay 5000 projector
Pace Cable box.


SET UP - was actually far easier than expected, unit did lockup twice in the four hours i was using it. The unit fuctions great as a media centre remote, actually has all the controls that are on the microsoft remote.

Geting the marantz components recognised was a doodle but i had to program the LG remote, which was'nt a great deal of bother.

Philips call this an activity based remote, in that the unit knows what components that you have and based your activities around how use these to look at dvds, watch tv, listen to music ect.

Cut to an hour or 2 later and i was pretty much set up. One function that i really liked was the "room off" feature, which shuts down all components with one button, very helpful.

I'd have to say that i was pleasantly suprised with the unit, even the girlfriend was pretty much up and running quickly and not doing her usual thing of flinging one of our eight remotes at me yelling " All i want to do is look at some bloody telly!!!"

This is not a pro-users device, some will find the programming aspects of it limited and granted they are, but as a universal remote its pretty good.

The epg fuction works well and its great to be able to look through whats on without having to do it onscreen interupting other viewers and exposing oneself to a flying remote. One thing is that the epg data is lost when the unit is switched off, it can be set to update every day, it does this via wifi and takes a time feed off the internet also.

Last the media streaming function, i was expecting this to be a nightmare. Actually philips own software worked spot on with vista and i was soon flickling thorugh my collection ( a bit slowly, wireless b you see) from the comfort of my bedroom. The unit has a tiny speaker, and to listen through a stero or headphones you need to use the charging dock which has a 3.5 mm plug, although the dock does not need to be connected to the mains.


If you are on a budget and cannot afford the harmony 1000 i would recommend this unit, if you are a pro user who needs every little thing to be spot on all the time i would suggest you avoid.