Against my own recommendations, I suggested an IR repeater system from a different company to a client of mine. He was interested in hiding the repeater so I found a great solution for him. Get this center channel speaker, and inside it you could put the receiver from this kit.

Seemed simple enough, and the whole thing seemed just like the Xantech kits I'm used to, just with a different IR receiver shape.

But it doesn't work.

I can tell it's technically "working," as I can see the emitters light up when I send a signal to the receiver, but the components in the system refuse to respond! Anyone know what could be going on?

use your empeg to display the IR codes and see what's happening

Ha! I love it Sadly I currently have no idea where my empeg is (don't stone me!). It certainly made the move, but hasn't come out of the boxes yet. Yikes, it's been five to six years now since I've actually had one installed...

a bit off of what you're looking for, but I picked up one of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000C1Z0HA/ref=oh_details_o04_s01_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and it works amazingly well. I tried the Powermid thing, or rather, tried to, but it was DOA.

Good thing you numbered your boxes and matched them to a manifest and noted where they were stored. You did, didn't you?

Is the equipment's own IR receiver also able to see the beam from the actual remote? I have had issues until I blocked the equipment such that it ONLY saw the repeater's signal.

I thought I had a problem with mine but there was tonnes of dirt trapped behind the lens of the IR receiver on my skybox, a little cleaning got it working.

Definitely tried that. I stuck the repeater to the front of the box, closed the doors to the cabinet, and sent the signals. Nothing.


I don't think that's it here. I know that a signal is going through because I can see it on the leads. The boxes just aren't responding, which is incredibly frustrating.

For what it's worth, two years ago I installed one of these $40 boxes from Cables To Go (related thread here from two years ago). I mounted the IR receiver for the repeater box in front of my TV next to its own IR receiver, so you always point the remotes to the same place, no matter what. It does have a bright blue LED that blinks whenever it receives an IR code, which could be helpful to you to debug the system, and then you might put some electrical tape over that part if your client doesn't like it.

Two years on, I'm still quite happy with this. A few months ago, I thought it was failing on me, and it turned out that the IR repeater was fine but my TiVo remote was flaking out. I bought a new one and everything's been groovy.

Thanks for the link, Dan. I don't think the client will like it because he was excited about the hidden receiver. I'm going to try out a Xantech product for not much more. I'm more confident in them. The one in place now was distributed by some company called "Wired Home" which appears to be a division of Dayton Audio. Either way, the control block is nearly unmarked, with no indication of who made it.

I'll try the Xantech product for now and see how that goes...

This was what happened to me originally, and why I came to the BBS looking for IR repeater advice. When y'all told me to Just Get Xantech, I did, and the problem went away, and I'm still super-happy with the Xantech unit.

Awesome. Thanks, Tony. I'll try to heed my own advice next time.

I think the main problem was that the Xantech unit didn't show up at first on my Amazon search. I'm not sure why. It's basically the same product, and it's on Prime which the other kit wasn't. Xantech is pretty awful at appealing to anyone other than installers, and their own site reflects that. I don't know if it's a conscious effort to avoid the casual home theater geek or what, but they seem to be doing their best to put those potential customers off.

For what it's worth, the IR receiver for the Cables To Go box is relatively compact (roughly the size of an AA battery, except squarish rather than round). Depending on the speaker, that might or might not fit behind the speaker grill.

...excellent point...

You're correct about that. Well, maybe next time. Besides, I'd be comfortable setting that one up for myself, but for a client - especially one who's already had one bad product experience - I'd rather stick with Xantech. They have the reliable name. I would have gone with them in the first place if they'd shown up in my search.

Just an update: Xantech is the best.

I quickly set up a dry run and it simply worked right out of the box. No problems. I'm so pissed at the other product. It was a piece of junk. I swapped the systems out and everything worked perfectly.

On a related note: I had recommended a Yamaha receiver that fit in these people's budget. I also recommended an Apple TV (they had two iPhones and an iPad). They noticed that the receiver had Airplay in it, so they decided to skip the Apple TV because all they wanted was a way to show photos of their baby on their TV.

Well I guess I wasn't aware that there are different definitions of "Airplay." By that, I mean that apparently Yamaha has their own definition, which ONLY includes music, and even then mostly just from the Music app. I couldn't Airplay photos, video, or Pandora. It just wouldn't work.

It wasn't a huge surprise because, as usual, these are hardware companies that don't realize they're TERRIBLE at software, but it's definitely odd and frustrating. So, I advised them again to get an Apple TV.

Oh, the most annoying part was when I called Yamaha tech support about the issue. I said "so, I'm trying to use Airplay to push music, photos, and video." The response "huh? you can't play photos over Airplay!" A-holes.

AirPlay (and the competing DLNA/UPnP) have failed on being clear with their messaging on what each device can and can't do. Probably would have helped if each side came up with distinct names for each sub feature. "Yes, it supports PhotoShare, but not VideoShare" or something.

For Apple, they've had "AirTunes" since 2004, and it meant audio streaming to Airport Express units. Over time, they licensed AirTunes to other companies including Yamaha.

In 2010, they added video/photo/mirroring/dual screen to AirTunes, renaming it to "AirPlay". Apple has not licensed the newer part out as far as I'm aware, or if they have it available, no one has picked it up. So for now, only the AppleTV can work for anything beyond audio.

Thanks for the background, I'm happy to have a better understanding of it now. Wish I'd known it earlier, and it's unfortunate that this kind of misunderstanding can happen, but it's not surprising that it does...

One thing though: I thought for sure I was able to Airplay photos and video to my Boxee Box... I'll have to borrow my wife's iPad tonight and check that out. I'm not saying the Boxee people licensed it out, though