I have had the Pioneer remote for about a month now and must say that it is brilliant.

The unit it self is very easy to fit and fits nicely to the steering wheel and doesn't get in the way while driveing. It took about ten minutes to fit but a top tip would be if you can get some ball end allen keys to make it easier to fit. Also the strap needs triming keep the lump you cut off as this is a spare strap.

The remote has far fewer buttons than the credit card remote. This presents no problems for normal operations but searchs are out the window.
Behind the remote you have volume up and down, on the front you have nine buttons on the front. One on it's own four in a star pattern the same as the four on the front of the empeg, and the remaining four as two rocker type buttons.

The way it is set up with the volume buttons being the volume. The ATT button is acting as a pause button. The four buttons in a star pattern can be used to control menus like the four buttons on the front but only after you have pushed the up button then they are just the same. The top rocker switch one side cycles through the visuals and the other side cycles throught the info modes. The bottom rocker one side toggles shuffle on and off and the other side tweaks the matching source.

Using it is very easy and it is quite intuative. It makes using the empeg alot easier as the credit remote is rather fiddly and difficult to find the right buttons, using the front buttons is okay but you have to take your hand off the wheel and normally your line of sight follows your hand which ain't good when driving.

So if you can't wait for the radio with sony stick or you have nowhere to place a sony stick in your car give this unit a try.

The most scarey bit for me was putting the custom kernal onto the empeg but i found it very easy if you can put a custom picture on your empeg you can put on a custom kernal.

Go to the geek site then follow the links to franks site and get the custom kernal then go to tonys site and download his logo editor install logo editior and then run the logo editior and then use it to install the kernal over a serial cable it is that easy.

So give it a go i give it 8/10 and will give it 10/10 if the empeg guys support it as standard as the sony stick support started off as a user project so hopefully they can play with one of these and give us standard support.