Universal's dual-use KP-900 wireless keypad / remote gets official

Remember that intriguing KP-900 that came our way courtesy of the FCC late last month? Turns out, this creature is getting all official on us today, with Universal proudly proclaiming that its newest IR / RF dual-use remote will be debuting at the Electronic House Expo in Orlando next month. The multifaceted gizmo is made to be retrofitted into any home that could use a wall-mounted home automation controller and a sophisticated home theater remote, and it should be hitting authorized dealer locations next month for $599. Not bad, not bad at all.

[Via Widescreen Review]

[Joe_Templeman @ Feb 13th 2008 9:22AM]

Jesus! At $599 I'll happily keep the numerous remotes I have already thanks!

[Jimmy Jones @ Feb 13th 2008 9:49AM]

Thats madness Spartans! I just swapped a logitech Harmony 650 or so for $50 on amazon. Are you kidding me? @ $599? I'd get me a nice lappie from Lenovo or may be even N95 8GB.

[drocpsu @ Feb 13th 2008 10:42AM]

looks cool. Wall mounted though? If I wanted to have to get up and walk over to change the channel/volume/source, I could just walk over to my entertainment center and change them manually. What is this, 1980? I'll keep my Harmony and change it from wherever I'd like!

[Ben Del Vacchio @ Feb 13th 2008 12:29PM]

$599? Think the 'Skip' buttons needs to be bigger.

[Jackx @ Feb 13th 2008 4:45PM]

ummmm....you know it does slide out of the wall mount right?? way to go sherlock... ;-)

[Marcus JB @ Feb 13th 2008 4:59PM]

It does slide out and it is quite a nice product. Saw it at ISE a couple of weeks ago. Nice feel to it.

[XIII @ Feb 13th 2008 6:21PM]

Awesome. Now my remote can match my thermostat.

[Rosstaman @ Mar 4th 2008 8:45PM]

Looks like I am late to this party - just discovered this press release weeks later - sorry.

I have to say that I am initially excited to see a product like this. I have wiring for keypads in my house, but haven't found anything suitable and adequate for control of both house and theater/audio. Clearly, this unit would do the trick. I currently use several of Universal Remote's MX-850s and would love a wall-mounted one of those. They are not lacking, even though they don't have as much capacity as this new KP-900.

Capacity aside, though, the MX-850 is more capable than this new devices (as are the other serial programmable handhelds):
MX-850 has numeric keypad vs KP-900 has none
MX-850 has with 10 soft keys aligned to the LCD vs KP-900 has 6 keys misaligned
MX-850 has with dedicated transport controls (play, stop, FF...) vs KP-900 has hardkeys that could do those functions, but w/o intuitive icons.
MX-850 controls 20 devices vs KP-900 controls 255, but how often do you hit that limit?
MX-850 sells for about half the price.
MX-810 has color display.
TX-1000 has larger display and touch screen - higher cool factor and not drawback on a wall mount unit.
Perhaps the dual functionality of handheld and wall-mount has confused the designers and compromised both designs - ended up with the lowest common denominator.

Touch panels are notoriously overpriced - one reason I haven't bought one - seems UR wants to cash in on this. This looked initially enticing, even at $599. But, the value proposition is clearly lacking. The huge capacity of something like this is mostly unusable. Just think of accessing the full 255 components when you only have 6 soft keys. Using a pure hierarchy, that would take navigating 4 screens just to reach the desired device and then, probably a couple more to reach the command you want. Other methods might get you to common screens faster, but bury some things much deeper.

Hopefully, Universal Remote will recognize all of this and retarget it to a lower end model. I might pay an extra $50 for the wall-mount form factor with equivalent functionality. I gladly pay $50+ extra for PC programmability - like an MX-850 over MX-650 - street prices. I think the most they can list this for and have it sell well is probably $400, assuming street prices a bit below that, or that it comes programmed through an installer. Alternatively, this would need to be redesigned to have a larger display and at least 12 soft keys with 8 characters each to justify this price.