|
|
I am very impressed with RTI's Theater Touch T2 remote control, it has exceeded my
expectations in pretty much every reguard. It is larger than I was expecting, it fits
in my hand well, and the buttons are easy to reach. The touch screen is fast and very
easy to read and use.
I have always loved TV and movies, I eventually became a full fledged home theater nut. This caused my equipment to become more and more complicated to operate. It got to the point where I would keep 4-5 remotes handy and I was the only person who could operate the system. I did not have much difficulty understanding how to control the system, but it was turning into a real hassle. I have always felt that the remote control was a very important device because it is a component you interact with every time you use your system. If your remote is a hassle to operate you will eventually find using the system is a hassle and it may become a chore and less enjoyable. I could tell that was happening to me so I started looking at universal remotes. I ended up using my Yamaha receiver's big silver learning remote. It showed me how great macro's can be and caused me to really apreciate how a remote can change your home theater experiance. Unfortunately it did not really have enough buttons to handle all my remotes and I was still the only one who could use my system. I decided to upgrade and started looking at the Sony RM-AV2000 touch screen remote. I had heard quite a bit about the Marantz RC2000 MK II remote, but I could not find it in stock anywhere and gave up on it. I picked up the Sony and really enjoyed using it. With some care I was able to fit almost every button to all my remotes in it. The only problem was that I still had to remember what keys did what as the LCD only had a few available labels for each button. That got a little annoying and there were only three macro buttons. I liked the remote, but it was not really what I was looking for. It was around this time that I discovered www.RemoteCentral.com, I was looking for more information about the Sony remote when I started hearing talk about a new remote from Philips called the Pronto. This remote sounded really amazing. I started following it and ordered one as soon as they started shipping. The remote was great and totally handled all my remote needs. I used it for a long time before the software came out, and the software just made it amazing to use. I was very happy with it. I spent an enormous about of time playing around trying to make my configuration better and easier to use. I was completely hooked for quite a while. I really do love TV and when Philips released the TiVo I could not resist and ordered one. I do not know how I lived without one of these before. :) It totally changed the way I watch TV. It also changed my Pronto configuration. The peanut shaped remote that the TiVo came with has an amazing design, I would almost say it is perfect. I tried for months to create a Pronto configuration that could do it justice and I just could not accomplish the task. The TiVo uses it's navigation cursor quite a bit in it's every day use. That was very hard to deal with when you don't have hard buttons for the cursor and your screen layout is cramped. The backlight on my Pronto stopped working after it was dropped. This is the event that really made it clear to me that I wanted more physical buttons on my remote. I discovered just how often I had to look at the screen and it was way more than I had expected. I decided that it was once again time for a new remote. I had been following the Theater Touch forum over at www.RemoteCentral.com for a while. It sounded like a great remote, but I was not sure about a number of things and was skeptical that I would prefer it to the Pronto. I really wanted a Pronto with more hard buttons, this seemed close but I worried that the touch screen was too small. I was also worried about the ergonomics of the remote. When I looked at the screen shots of the remote I envisioned it much smaller than it really is. The touch screen is not really small, but you are pretty limited in the number of buttons you can comfortably fit on a page. The thing is, I do not need many touch screen buttons! I had not really considered the fact that half the buttons I use daily would be handled by hard buttons now. Most of my Pronto pages had a huge navigation cursor taking up room. I also discovered that switching between pages was not anywhere near as slow as it was with the Pronto. That made it hurt much less for the few devices I could not fit the most common buttons on the front page. The Theater Designer software is very good. I had no problems picking it up after only skimming through the manual. I was off and designing my layout almost right away. The only snag was that I had to wait for the battery to charge before I could start learning IR code. I am super impressed by the flexibility the T2 provides for macros. I love having double click checks and other neat options. The macro editor is easy to use that I really enjoyed entering in my macros. I got my initial configuration learned in and went off to test it. It turns out about half of the IR codes that I learned did not take. That was when I remembered a feature mentioned that I had not seen documented anywhere. I went to Remote Central and found what I was looking for, if you press F12 in the IR manager the option to convert a Pronto IR code was available. That was a very thoughtful tool to include even if it is not documented. This attention to details and the effort that went into making my experiance a great one has really impressed me and I am so glad that I decided to take the risk and order the T2. I am also impressed with the build quality of the remote. I have managed to drop it once already and it passed the test with no problems at all. I would say it fell about three feet to a concrete floor with thin industrial carpet. If it can survive a few of those it should be close to indestructable. I did run into one user created issue. I discovered that my TiVo fast forward buttons did not respond quickly. With the OEM remote I could hit it three times quickly and they would "cue up". This did not seem the case with the T2. I eventually tracked it down to the fact that I was using a double click check on that button which caused the remote to wait .3 seconds before sending out the IR signal. I fixed that up and am very happy with the results. I like the feel of this remote in my hand and have not had any trouble getting from the center buttons to the touch screen buttons using only one hand. I do need to stretch a little to hit the channel up and down buttons and the number pad, but that is not really that big a deal. I don't use the number pad often and the channel up and down keys are not really difficult to hit, just less convienent than the other buttons. I find it easy to control my system with this remote and am VERY happy to report that it controls my TiVo wonderfully. I think the Philips TiVo peanut shapped remote is one of the best designed remotes I have ever held. It is perfect for controlling a TiVo and I will always love it. I still prefer the peanut for controlling the TiVo, but the T2 does such a wonderful job of it that I will have no feelings of regret when I put my TiVo remote in the remote graveyard. The T2 is head and shoulders above the Pronto when it comes to controlling a TiVo. The real buttons for the navigation cursor makes a huge difference. I actually breathed a sigh of relief when I tested this out. I even noticed an improvement navigating some DVD menus which was a nice bonus. I am really very pleased with the way things have turned out. It will be easy for guests to control my sysstem even if they are not familiar with it. It did not take much to make an easy to follow layout that people should be able to pick up with little instruction. I would say the most difficult thing to understand about my current setup is that you double click the power button to turn everything off. I am very glad I picked up the Theater Touch remote, and would easily recomend it to anyone looking for hard buttons and the flexibility that a touch screen can provide. This is one snazzy remote! If you are interested in more details about the T2's features or would like another opinion, I recomend checking out the review at www.RemoteCentral.com. I would be happy to answer questions if anyone is curious about anything. Go back to the Main page. |