Programmable remotes

FWIW Philips discontinued the Pronto line of remotes and I am not sure what if any they still make.

I have used Logitech Harmony removed for over ten years now and still have my first one working at a friends place.

I have used it with EMM Labs, Krell, Audio Research, Classe', Meridian, Anthem and numerous other products without a hitch, I highly recommend them!

After re-considering the Harmony (Logitech) remotes, I decided to go with a URC R50. It does not have the advantage of the online database, but I did confirm URC (which makes professional HT remotes) has quite a large database (that includes Bryston, Parasound, etc) locally in the remote. All programming is done on the remote itself which can be time consuming but I only have three devices so that is not too bad. It also tends to be "device" oriented as opposed to "activity" oriented, which I prefer.

I like it because it's cheap (at about $50) and URC products have a good reputation for reliability. I also wanted one with no touch screen for that reason. The Harmony units without a touch screen only have four screen labeled commands and this URC has 6. This is important for the Bryston because the "hard" buttons of most remotes do not have functions like the inputs needed for the BDA-1, so they have to be available as special buttons on the screen.

For the money, just building a remote to control the Bryston is worth it. Since I have the remotes for the PWT and Parasound, I should be able to add them as well even if they are not in the database.

A follow up to this post.

I got the URC R50 and the on board database is useless for high end gear. I was unable to build the Bryston remote I wanted, because even though Bryston was listed, none of the codes would activate the BDA-1. Same with Parasound JC-2. PS Audio was not even listed.

However, I was able to build remote "devices" for everything I had the original remotes for. Teaching the R50 from an exisiting remote was straight forward if not a bit time consuming. Using the remotes of the PWT and JC-2, I was able to build an "audio device" with combined controls from both, which was nifty. If there was no labeled hard button on the R50 for a command, you could assign one of 48 screen buttons to any command you wished. You can custom label these screen buttons, so there is no confusion later about the commands or what they do.

The volume controls were a bit quirky, as the R50 would only send incremental volume commands when pressed (even if held down), whereas the original JC-2 remote will run the volume min to max if held down. This was actually a blessing in disguise, because the JC-2 remote has the tendancy to overcorrect a volume change, whereas the incremental R50 makes much smaller changes and you don't have to worry about how long a "tap" is on the remote.

Now if I can find a Bryston dealer with a BDA-1 remote, I could clone the commands I need on the R50 by bringing it to his shop.

Overall I like this remote, even though I could not build the Bryston remote from scratch. Looks like I would need one of the Logitech remotes for the Bryston (or find a cooperative Bryston dealer).