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.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
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.