What Hugo means is that the Sony Remote controller outputs a analog value [its actually output as a resistance which is read/processed as a analog value and changes according to what buttons on the remote are pressed - this keeps the Sony stick remote cheap to make but not necessarily as reliable as say a all digital stick remote would be (if there was such a thing)].

The Tuner module in the empeg then turns this analog value from the stick remote into button presses.

Now the resistance values output by the Sony remote are not always exactly the same for all Sony stick remotes and/or everytime you press the buttons - the resistance changes a bit depending on the weather and other things like temperature etc.

This therefore means that sometimes the empeg will either not see the button press(es) or will see them but return the wrong button(s) presses.
Neither of which is particularly useful in most cases.

Hugos comment about changing the ADC values in 1.04 simply means that the 1.04 software will try and be more forgiving about the range of analog values it allows for each button [within the very real limits of the Sony stick remote] and thus try and be more accurate in working out what button(s) are being pressed to help eliminate the problem of missing or mis-assigned button presses.

Having played with the Sony stick remotes myself on a small microprocessor with a ADC interface I can tell you these Sony remotes are not very consistent all the time with regards to being able to 100% all the time determining the correct buttons being pressed [you can get close e.g. 99.95% but that 0.05% is still annoying!].

As far as the various input devices and their short comings - your comments are correct.

Once the 2.0 release comes out we have been promised that we will be able to have more flexible button assignments for the Sony remote controller according to our own preferences.

I think once you have a reliable [and customisable] stick interface on your empeg you will find that will answer nearly all your common user input requirements.

Short of a full touch-screen interface, no one interface will probably ever be able to do all user input requirements.

Still how many car stereos do you know of that do mp3 playback and support 3 (or more) user interface devices? - the common 3 being the head unit, the remote control and a wired/stick interface [The empeg supports these AND ethernet and serial as well!]

Very few mp3 players can do even 3 interfaces & even fewer do a good job of making them work well in a consistent and usable way.

Usually its often that the interface on the devices is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator [e.g. head unit buttons with remote and other inputs being the same as the head unit buttons].

I'm just glad that there are zillions more functions than buttons on my empeg - I've had plenty of consumer equipment where the number of available functions is severely dumbed down to fit the small number of buttons the device supports and this makes for a truly frustrating device with very limited capabilities and appeal.

So, keep it up Hugo and everyone else.

Maybe one day we will all arrive in the promised land of 100% user definable control of our empegs.

For now, I'll take the (may be) imperfect empeg just as it is over any number of perfect available "real soon now"TM devices.