Been offered a Marantz RC5000i

[qualar]

Ive been offered the above with docking station for £140. Is this a good price and is it worth getting.

[Bapapapa]

You can get a brand new 2mb Pronto from Richers now for £150, so it depends on how much you want/need the docking station. :nuts:

[qualar]

Dont you need the docking station to connect it to the PC, also it recharges the remote which is probably essential.

[Bapapapa]

Nope. The remote will connect to the PC thru the supplied serial cable.

The docking station will recharge the remote & it is handy I suppose to have somewhere for it to sit, but people have had trouble with them and as you can pick up Nicad battery chargers pretty cheap, it's in no way essential.

Saying all that I'd get the docking station, if I had a Pronto again. :D

[qualar]

What do you mean if you had a pronto again what do you have now and why did you ditch the pronto

[Bapapapa]

Ditched the Pronto 'cos it was utter lint. :(

Nah not really, missus made me get rid - too much money. :(

Just use my Yammy receiver remote now, controls *all* my kit just fine, so I've not really any need for a Pronto now anyway.

[qualar]

So in a nutshell would you reccomend the remote.

+ and -

[Bapapapa]

+

Totally customisable.

-

Too big & cumbersome.
Not enough hard buttons (ie you have to look at the screen a *lot*)
Scary to have around kids in case they drop it.
Takes a lot of time & effort to set it up to exactly suit your needs.
Expensive



BTW - If www.remotecentral.com didn't exist it'd be almost useless for the average joe to use.

[qualar]

So I take it by that you would not recommend it then

[Bapapapa]

If you got no kids, a lot of patience, a lot of remotes and like tinkering/designing your own control interfaces then I'd recommend it.

Thousands of people get on with them just fine, including a load on this forum, but believe me, it takes some work to get the most out of it.

[Urban Tiger]

Had mine a year now and love it (and I have a 3 year old running around!)

You can nick all the decent screens for your equipment from RemoteCentral, hack them together and then tinker to suit your needs perfectly. One button on my Marantz turns the TV on, the amp on, the DVD on, sets the amp to DVD input, and spits the DVD tray out ready for you to put a disc in. If you get it right, you can't live without it.

But...a friend bought one, didnt have the patience to set it up properly, and promptly sold it on.

Horses for courses, but the amount of users over at Remote Central shows how popular this gadget is.

Worse case scenario, if you buy it and dont like it, someone will buy it on the classifieds from you. :)

[MartinC]

Originally posted by qualar
So in a nutshell would you reccomend the remote.
+ and -

absolutely...

I could not live without mine now...,
but as Baps says you need the time to get it to your liking...

grab all the files off remotecentral that have your kit, pick your favs, then make a mix of all to get your bits in. then you just have to gradually change it to your personal taste.

if you have more than say 3-4 remotes then that makes a difference...(e.g.. me - tv, vcr, amp, dvd, cd, md, sky, cable etc)

or if you have a way you like your system setup...,
and want to make it easier for other people to get a film going.

eg... mine has one button to watch a film.
switches tv on... (ch9 to stop interference, switches sky off if needed)
switches amp on to dvd
switches tv's sound off from menus
switches dvd on .. (asking if one already in or ejects tray) and sorts out any region problems (manual switch on mine).

takes 3 remotes to do this manually and a lot of key presses...

with a macro (and a few menus)... 2-3 key presses at most.

the power off switch on the dvd panel reverses all this in 1 go,
and takes you back to sky.

dead easy for the missus, my mum, or my 3 yr old niece, and can be extended to dim lights, close curtains, drop projector screens etc - basically anything you can imagine.


similarly, I also have a CD changer set to be used around the house and its just not as useful without being to pick from an A-Z of CDs... or groups. impossible without a pronto/ marantz (at this price).

[ajm]

before pronto I had 11 remotes. Now just the one :-)

Yeah, if your not single now, you will be after you've set it up (it takes a while). Hop on over to http://www.remotecentral.com They have a pronto forum with tons of help, and hundreds of complete systems you can download to see what other people have done. You can even download the s/w so you can run the pronto emulator on your pc (part of the configuration program). Emulator is so, good, becareful using it on a laptop with an IR port at the back!

Took me ages to work out why I shut everything off once, when I hit a button on the emulator :-)