I think most can see through the marketing hype once they have an understanding of what can and does happen in the field. The PV, SESPT, SEST and others all can tune a bike. Its just a matter of what your looking for. All of the supposed new features have been in Mastertune all along but we do use a PC and some do not like that. We understand that, and know it's not for everyone but with that said it's also a joke when these others come along and claim a new feature when all they did was to add a feature from Mastertune to what they were already selling. Not new but new to them.
Heatwave
As for tuning Open Loop with a PV automatically, that's just more marketing hype. When in open loop the ECM only issues the programmed information and no corrections are being made. There is no feedback to the ECM to correct it. What can be done is to apply what you learned in Closed loop to the Open loop area and that has been in Mastertune since it was released to the public in 2008. Again not a new feature but it maybe new to PV. While I do not use the PV daily I have used it and there is more to it than pushing just one button as you describe and if your going to create a base calibration you still need to use a PC to load it into the PV unit itself. While you can do some tuning from the PV itself it still has it's limits then your back to the PC again. Its a nice unit and has its place but donot for a moment think it can do what Mastertune is capable of doing.
I would typically never refute what you say Steve, as you know far more about tuning and software than I'll ever know. But in this one case you are incorrect on one point. The point being the methodology that the PV uses for autotuning outside of the closed loop area of a map or even a map that is entirely open-loop. Specifically, the PV changes the current map in ALL AFR cells to be closed loop. It then automatically reduces the entire spark table for both front and rear cylinders by 4 degrees. The PV then uses data from riding to modify the VE's in ALL cells for both the front and rear cylinders. It can also adjust the spark table as well but only by reducing spark (not increasing). Once the VE cells have been modified, the PV puts the 4 degrees back in, returns the AFR tables to their original settings and reloads the revised map. All these steps are invisible to the user as its all automated.
This approach to auto-tuning is entirely different from your software and SEPST. Only a side-by-side comparison on a dyno could determine which autotune approach performs better however neither TTS or SEPST can auto-tune in the open-loop section of the map with stock O2 sensors.
And the PV autotune is very close to a 1-button approach. Press a button to "auto-tune", ride the bike in this mode. hit the update button, flash the newly created map to the ECM and ride off with the new map. That is a fact and can't be refuted as I've done it many times on my own bike.
TTS is a pioneer in the world of HD tuning and I would never talk negative of it, particularly because I've never used it (unless you consider my tuning with SEPST to be the same). But technology advances and I'm sure the PV will be surpassed by "something" down the road. But for now, if ease of Auto-tuning across all regions of a bike's operating range with stock O2 sensors is of importance to the bike owner, then there is no product on the market today which matches the PV. As you pointed out, not everyone has this requirement and if having a laptop hooked up to your bike is a non-issue and you're only planning to tune in the closed-loop range of a bike's map, then TTS will deliver just as good a result as any other tuning software.