Radio Shack Wireless IR Remote Control Extender

"Started out working great but after 6 months it started to flake out. Tried to exchange it but gotta love Radio Shacks 30 day return policy."

"This system was a one star product before I opened it up and put a few repairs and tweeks into it. Prior to my repairs, it worked intermittently and was not reliable. Laziness prevented me from returning it as I was past the return period, so I decided to crack it open and see what I could do to make things better. Upon first opening the receiver portion I found that the antenna wire was not directly linked to the circuit board, but instead had two insulated wires touching together as the connection. I stripped 1/2 inch off both and twisted them together and put a piece of electrical tape on them to make sure nothing gets shorted out. I also looked at the IR receiver and noticed a wire mesh over the opening. I carefully pried it down and out of the way, but left it connected, just in case I needed to put it back into place if I ever experienced too much IR interference. I also adjusted the direction the IR bulbs pointed, in the IR transmitters. The IR bulbs are LED lights and most of the IR light comes top of the LED. So unless the top is pointing directly at the IR receiver of the system being controlled, it is less reliable. You can see the direction of the IR bulb transmission without opening the case by using a digital camera or cell phone with picture capability and looking at the transmitters when the are in operation through the viewfinder. After I put it all back together, I was glad that I kept the system and didn't go for the more expensive one I found elsewhere. Now I can perfectly control all my hidden devices. Shame that Radio Shack doesn't QC their stuff a bit better before sending it out the door."

"Wall mounted HDTV in bedroom.Ugly Cable box on shelf just below in celler.Extender sender on bedroom dresser.Extender reciever on shelf in celler in front of ugly cable box.HDTV remote operates this unit perfectly.The Shack needs to put this product on the top of their marketing list.Could be huge demand for Extenders if more people knew this product existed."

"The extender is prone to RF interference. Mine was picking up so much interference from outside sources that it kept sending erroneous IR signals to the cluster of sat boxes and VCRs and TVs, that swamped out the real signals. Had to replace with a home-made 5.8 GHz device (using scrounged parts).



Its antenna length suggests it to be using 413MHz for the RF link, not sure, can't find the usually good Radio Shack source info. Spec Analyzer couldn't find the burst.



Newer, similar devices have gone to higher, and some uwave frequencies. They exhibit a big improvement, but a bit more costly, coming down in price."

"I love the concept of this product and went in search of it after we discontinued our Dish Network DVR (which had an RF remote standard) and went with a cable company that required a cable box to turn channels and the cable box uses an IR signal. We didn't want to pay $5 for each TV, so wanted to put the cable box on one TV and be able to change channels in the other two rooms we have a TV.



The product has fallen far short of expectations - we have a difficult time getting it to pick up a signal from our remote and when it does, it often repeats that signal too long so instead of changing up one channel, we see the TV change up two or three channels."

"We had it working for about a year and then quit working altogether. While it did not have the range we hoped for, it did work up to about 10ft (3.3m), the RCA remote that is also IR works across the other side of the room about 25ft).



We used this extender, for the down stairs, Direct TV receiver (about 20ft away), As the IR remote control (the RCA remote) will not go threw floors, So we bought the Remote control Extender form Radio Shack, with poor results but hey at least it worked (for a while).



It did not have any excess heat or any moving parts, nor were we hard on the product, by moving it around frequently (we moved it about 3 times in about a year), banging on it (nope never did that), dropping it, Etc., so I can not see how it could ware-out so easy."

"I bought this product to hide all of my home theater components in a cabinet. I didn't think that it would work. The transmitter is hidden near the television, the receiver is on a shelf in a cabinet, in another room with a Surround Receiver, A cable box, and a Blue ray player. I use the basic Comcast remote, or the Surround remote or the blue ray remote, and they all work as if I was pointing the remote at the individual components. This product works great for hiding components!"

"I could not get the extender to work under any circumstances (tested with my Denon, Tivo, Samsung and Sharp remotes); with the transmitter and received only separated by only 6' (opposite sides of a non-structural interior wall).



Thinking the first one I'd brought home was defected (it had obviously been un-packaged, used returned) I swapped it for a "less used" unit at the store I'd purchased it from (which had *also* been un-packaged and I assume returned) -- with exactly the same results.



Nada. Zero. Zilch. Null. Nothing.



Receiver light blinks, indicating it sees the IR from my remotes, but no luck on the transmitter side no matter how much fiddling I tried."

"It would not pass IR commands reliably from the transmitter to the receiver. Had to position the remote control very close to the transmitter, tilting the transmitter so the IR window was directly perpindicular to the remote control helped. Also installing longer antennas on both transmitter and receiver helped. But none of this made this product work very well. It also had lots of IR interference from my 47" LCD when first turned on, even after shielding it, just reflected IR was enough to jam the transmitter. Bought a Recoton ir100 and all the problems were solved."

"This works great! I can't believe the negative comments! I actually came to the website today to get another one for our bedroom. We've been using these for over a year now. You do have to figure out where to point your remote control. It is not always perfectly in the middle, etc. But after you figure that out (and don't ever move the extender!) you'll love it! We were able to hide our cable/tivo box inside of a cabinet. All you see is the extender!"