Review: Philips Pronto TSU9300 Remote

Disclaimer: Fred Harding works for Capitol Sales, a reseller of Philips products. His review, nevertheless, provides a useful analysis for CE pros.

Philips has broadened its line of powerful remote controls with the TSU9300, which joins the 9200, 9400, 9600 and 9800 as LCD-based remote controls.

The Pronto 9200 is the only model that doesn't use Pronto Edit Professional programming software, which allows users to configure the remote control with a wide range of graphic options for button shapes and sizes.

System Setup

I used the wizard to configure the TSU9300 for a simple system with:

• A Harman Kardon AVR receiver
• An RCA satellite receiver
• A Panasonic plasma TV
• An LG Blu-Ray player

Programming allowed me to access the Philips database for codes and store them in my database. This gives busy programmers a simple way to access relevant codes on a timely basis.

The TSU9300 can operate as a stand alone IR device, but I chose to use it with the Philips RFX9400 receiving base. Philips RF devices operate on Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz frequencies.

The RFX9400 is designed to operate out of the box, allowing up to 16 extenders in a system. Each of the extenders has four addressable IR emitter ports on the back side, allowing for convenient operation of multiple iterations of the same component.

Philips also offers a RFX9600 RF base, which is more of a component style receiving base. The more powerful RFX9600 affords the user the ability to manipulate and control a much more powerful system using the three RS-232 ports, power sensing ports, four relay ports or the four addressable IR ports.

Features of the TSU9300

The 9300 comes with a charging cradle for its lithium-polymer battery. It features a 2.8-inch color LCD screen and a series of buttons, including a home button, menu, guide, back up, volume up and down and channel up and down keys, as well as info and muting keys. There also are five humped buttons below the screen that are product related, so that one could control the DVD player by either pushing the LCD screen or corresponding button.

Those hard buttons are complemented by a cursor mechanism. The cursor has up, down, left, right and OK buttons, as well as a wheel that would allow me to easily scroll through songs I loaded onto a Media Center PC or Escient Fireball music server.

At the top of the remote, a power button enables one-touch functionality. The side of the remote has a backlight button, although I programmed my unit to backlight upon motion. Finally, there are page up/down buttons on the side of the remote, which allowed me to drill down deeper for my favorite satellite channels.

Improvements Needed

The Pronto TSU9300 performed admirably with the simple programming I gave it. It would be a logical bedroom remote in homes that already have the larger 9600 or 9800 remote.

There are some improvements that should be made. Make the back of the remote a little less slippery. I occasionally needed to shift the remote control in my hand because it was sliding downwards.

The humped buttons aren't particularly useful. There are five of them right next to each other, and I had to glance at the remote to make sure I was hitting the correct button.


Source: Philips