The Pronto is completely reliable, but mounted and used in this fashion, especially if bouncing IR off of some surface where someone might get in the path of the IR, introduces unreliability to your overall system (or, in MadAve's latest irritating lingo, your solution).

You could get reliable performance if you strapped down the Pronto and put an IR sensor in front of it, and build the IR system into the podium so that two or three blasters fire IR backwards from the podium. Still, three or four people at the podium, which could happen, would block the IR.

And oh, yeah, I just remembered -- the RF Extender is actually less expensive than all the parts you would need to do an IR relay system (I'm thinking of Niles or Xantech, not PowerMids). Whenever possible, I spec the RF receiver because it adds to reliability and is less expensive than a sensor, power supply, wire, and LEDs and installation labor for a comparable number of components.