Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #242897 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Philips
• Model: SBCRU940

Amazon.co.uk Review
Fiddling around with multiple remote controls can be a real pain and spoil enjoyment of a TV programme or movie. If you want to watch a DVD with a particular arrangement of sound settings via home movie hardware, you normally have to manually tap all the required buttons. The Philips SBC RU940 Pronto 2mb Learning Remote Control is designed to make all this a thing of the past.

It can store settings for multiple devices and will talk to anything that can listen to infra red--that includes a range of home automation systems as well as entertainment devices. Its display is touch-sensitive, and the whole idea is to enable you to ditch the other remote controls and just use this one.

There is more to the SBC RU940 Pronto than just channel switching and volume control, though. If you want to make the most of it you’ll need to get to grips with its macros function. Once set up you can do stuff like turn on the football on TV but listen to the radio commentary with a single tap of a touch-sensitive button on the device--or, more appealing to some, set up those home movie settings mentioned earlier. The 2Mb of memory on board means there is room to store plenty of macros.

There are some drawbacks. The SBC RU940 Pronto is fairly large in the hand--certainly larger than most remotes, and its shape makes it difficult for anyone with small hands to use one-handed. It doesn’t come with a huge array of settings for different manufacturers built in. It can learn from handsets, but the painful part is that it has to learn each command one by one. At least you only have to go through that process once.

Power is supplied by four AA batteries--if you want to use rechargeables then an optional power adaptor and rechargeable cell makes keeping them topped up easy. And if you get really advanced, you can customise the user interface with software downloadable from www.pronto.philips.com.

The SBC RU940 Pronto is not an inexpensive item--you’ll need to justify the outlay, and for some people the benefits will outweigh the cost.--Sandra Vogel

Manufacturer's Description
SBC RU940 combines elegance, flexibility and customization to create a remote - as unique as you are. With 2MB of memory, and the larger custom configuration file, allows anyone from novice to advanced user to customize the remote to their specific home theatre needs. Combined with a user friendly and easy graphical set up, SBC RU940 is one of the most versatile and easy to set up learning remote controls.

Customer Reviews

Phillips Pronto, extreme versatility
If you are prepared to sit down at the computer and build your own layouts using the supplied software the Pronto is the most versatile and capable remote you can buy.
I downloaded existing layouts from a web site which I then juggled to suit my own set up, it was quicker. There are loads of graphics on this site to give the layout a professional look. Ie for satellite viewing the button is basically the BBC1 graphic and the action is "1,0,1,select" (a macro, several functions with one push of the button). The signal is likely to be much stronger than the remotes it replaces. You can edit your set up quickly and easily at any time.