Harmony Remotes - Hardware

[Solarius]

Okay this is frustrating me. I have several Motorola cable boxes on my home theater setup. 1 of them I use IR since its the one my daughter uses and I'd rather give her a trashy remote.

The other 2 are mine. I got the 890 with RF Extender so I don't have to get up to flip candy boxes up and down blocking the IR receivers on the boxes I don't want to use. The first time I setup the 890 and RF Extender it worked great. Port A fed my Comcast Tivo, Port B fed my Comcast TV Guide. Both worked independantly of each other. Now thatI've spend a couple of days reading more things and getting past the basic setup, I added my DVD player (IR control) to my 890 and now it won't individually control my RF Exetender boxes.

I've gone through the setup multiple times ensuring that my Comcast Tivo is set to use RF Extender Port A and my Comcast TV Guide is set to use RF Extender Port B.

I've changed it so Tivo is on Port D and TV Guide on Port B.

I've completely removed all devices, activities, remote, and RF extender from the software and started all over from scratch.

I, for the life of me, cannot figure out why it transmits on both Port A and Port B (or as it stands now, Port D and Port B).

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks

[WannabeActuary]

not sure when you got your 890, but my 890 came with with little black stickies that can hold the IR blaster tip in place and block the entire IR receiver on the device.  are you using them?  I have a feeling, that what's actually happening is that the blaster tip is positioned in such a way that the box can see the tip plugged into the other port.

one thing to check too, some devices have an IR port in the back that looks like a head phone jack.  you can connect a male to male stereo cable from the wireless extender to the IR port in the back of the device and then it goes directly to the device.  your devices may or may not have that ability

[fitzesq]

Solarius: I have the exactly same problem and it is driving me nuts - and it doesn't have anything to do with the IR pads. I think the problem is with the RF IR extender not actually assigning ports properly.  The problem for me is that both boxes are in the family room, but I pipe one of the boxes to my MBR.  When I'm watching the MBR cable box, my commands control both boxes even though I clearly have them on different ports, so when my kids are watching the Family room box, I hear complaints every time I try to watch the MBR box.  VERY frustrating.  Please let me know if you find out what the problem is.  

[Solarius]

Its definately not the IR itself. I use the black IR covers that come with the remote and I use black electrical tape around the edges to cut off any additional side leakage. Plus, the entertainment center has seperate shelves for each unit and the IR can't leak between the two.

Whats odd is that if say I set my remote to use the Tivo activity, but I have the Tivo IR lead disconnected from the RF extender, the commands from the remote don't affect the TV Guide box (which still has the IR lead attached). But once I connect up the Tivo IR lead to the RF extender again, both boxes then get IR signals. I've tried it in reverse, disconnect the TV Guide IR lead and get the same results. Only when both are connected does it send commands out on both IR leads.