A solution (one of many I'm sure) for IR sluggish response.

[Rich A]

A tip about IR blasters and slow response.

A little background here so you can understand what's going on. I have a home theater where all my PVR and other media stuff is located. I also have my BTV/BM output both to the HT Screen (projector) and an RF modulator that feeds the video and audio from the BTV PC though that modulator into the whole house cable tv distribution.

In the home theater I have one of those IR repeaters. It's like a wireless blaster. At each TV in other parts of the house, I have one RF/IR transmitter. This picks up my IR remote's signal, converts it to RF so the receiver in the lower level of the house in the home theater can change it back to IR and "blast" it to the equipment rack. So I can view BTV or BM on channel 92, from any TV in the house AND control it via the IR wireless blaster with my IR remote in any room.

Now here's what I have found. Everything works fine. EXCEPT when in the HT I find my remote to be somewhat "sluggish". No where as fast as it should be. The control of things from other parts of the house (via the RF repeater) is virtually instant. But the same IR remote running locally in the home theater is slow. Mind you, it's usuable without any errors etc., but just slow.

What I found was the IR "RF" receiver that sits in the home theater was somehow picking up the IR signals that I was sending when I was IN the theater. And it was doing something that caused a full second or more delay. In fact, one of my accessory devices (a DVD player) could NOT be controlled at ALL from the home theater. I wasn't too worried about it though, because I've been using the BTV/BM pc to play back DVDs and was going to get rid of the stand alone DVD player.

One day while working in the HT, (a never-ending project) I had to disconnect that wireless IR Blaster. I forgot to plug it back in. Wow, suddenly my local IR control in the HT became instantaneous ! No more delays! AND all of a sudden my stand alone DVD player started responding to it's IR commands.

Seems that this RF / IR repeater in the HT, was picking up the locally transmitted IR signals at the same time the actual devices were also picking up the IR directly. Some sort of conflict (double signals or something) was at the best case causing delays, and at the worst case causing no response at all.

Don't know if all RF/IR repeaters work the same way. This was one of those "Pyramid" types (got it from "Smart Home") and looks like those X-10 and Radio Shack things.

I solved "my" problem by adding a command to my Harmony remote. (ya gotta love that remote)

Now when I sit down in the home theater and choose (watch PVR) from my remote, it does this:

Turns OFF the local RF/IR remote blaster.
Turns on the projector switches it's input to the BTV PC.
Turns on the various audio/video devices in the HT. (dims lights etc.)

I've found this also gives me a much needed feature I hadn't thought of. Now when the HT is in use, no one in the remainder of the house can change anything because the local IR blaster/receiver is turned off.

When the theater is shut down, my remote turns the IR/RF repeater back on.

Hope this helps someone with similar problems with IR and blasters etc. I was living with this "delay" for some time before discovering this.

(edit) Additional note. Although it's much faster, I want to change that comment about it now being "instant". The original Hauppauge remote did indeed become instant again. However the Harmony still has a slight delay, although no where as bad as it was. I've found another tip for the harmony that I'll pass along in another thread.