This is a silly question, but I'm waiting for my Pronto to be delivered, and I'm curious about something. Underneath the mute button, do the volume buttons appear first, or do the channel buttons appear first?

The reason I ask is because all of the publicity photos I've seen to date (including the images in Daniel's review) show the channel buttons on top and the volume buttons on the bottom. But a recent visit to the Philips website shows the volume buttons on top (right under mute) and the channel buttons on the bottom.

This is peculiar because I had previously copied the same image from the Philips page to fool around with various button scenarios in a page layout program, and they used to be the other way around (I know, I'm weird--but then again, some of you seem to be rather fanatical about this remote too).

Were the publicity photos just photos of a pre-production unit, or has Philips made some kind of change? Not that it would matter to me much either way, but I'm just curious--particularly if there was a running change of some kind.

Channel on top, volume on bottom.... but then you
could program them any way you want... :-)

I've noticed that things always change between "publicity photos" and the actual end product.

For instance, on the box of the Pronto it shows the light sensor as slightly recessed in a small bevel, while on the final product it protrudes slightly. You can see that in the review here by comparing my photo (on top) with the publicity photo further down. Other than that, it seems the tactile "bumps" on the LEFT/RIGHT buttons got a bit smaller.

Now, I haven't seen a photo of the buttons in the MUTE/VOLUME/CHANNEL configuration. I think that would be a more LOGICAL configuration, but in practice you use the volume controls much more than the channel buttons, and Philips may have found the CHAN UP button got mis-hit a fair bit.

My design would probably have been CHANNEL/VOLUME/MUTE, with the mute button being a more flush design that couldn't be accidentally pressed easily. But then again, I would have used a completely different style for buttons (as mentioned in my "second look"). ;-)

Thanks, guys. That's what I thought. For what it's worth, the photo is at:

[Link: dvx8000.com]

This must be the photo that Daniel described being on the box. Like he says, the light sensor looks recessed in that version.

Oh, wow, that is an absolutely horrible picture. It looks like a scan of a mockup. I see that VOLUME and CHANNEL are indeed reversed.

If you compare the top photo here with the third or fourth picture down you can also see the difference. Not important, but interesting.

For the initial prototypes, the volume buttons were at the top, with the channel buttons underneath.

The preproduction and production units have the volume buttons at the bottom, and channel buttons above.

And yes, it's a horrible picture...