StarTech.com Wireless IR Remote Control Extender - 330 ft / 100m - IR to RF - Infrared Repeater - IR Extender for Cable Box - IR Repeater Kit (IREXT2),Gray

The StarTech devices work as advertised; they are replacing fifteen year old Radio Shack tech. StarTech labels each device. The "transmitter" listens for your remote inputs and transmits the signals on radio frequencies. The "receiver" receives the signals as RF and converts them back to infrared to control your devices. The infrared signals are effectively light, so line-of-sight is a requirement for those signals; RF signals between the StarTech units are where the magic happens.The StarTech "transmitter" has excellent sensitivity for listening for my TV/DirecTV remote, extending across the entire living room with good angles. The optional (included) cabled IR outputs that plug into the "receiver" are a nice touch, as they allow greater flexibility in positioning the unit in relation to the devices to be controlled. No issues with button-doubling, other than normal human error.

After looking at several other reviews, that were disappointed in the range or just said that it would not work with DirecTV or whatever set up they had, I went ahead and and took a chance and bought one anyway. I cannot emphasize how important your experience can be with this unit and it all depends on close observance.We are talking about a ranch house out in Texas. Fiber optics cable was already ran from a splitter hooked up to a DirecTV satellite box in the house bedroom out to a outdoor pavilion 30 feet by 50 feet with a tin roof on top. Distance was about 80 feet. The receiver unit in the bedroom was about a foot from the ceiling on the same shelf as the DirecTV satellite box. Transmitter unit at the Pavilion was about five feet off the ground on a wooden shelf. Very little obstruction except for the bedroom wall. At first I didn't get anything at all. It didn't work. Was getting pretty disappointed moving the receiver and transmitter around trying to find a hot spot.So I was just about to pack it up that evening and send it back to Amazon for a refund when I decided to have a close look at exactly what was going on. The bedroom was dimly lit. I climbed up on the ladder and noticed through the lens on the receiver unit you could see a flickering red light inside fairly bright and it was on all the time. So I am receiving a unwanted signal from somewhere. We are talking about interference. At first I decided to play the interference tracker guy. Turned off the fluorescent lights in the house as well as the lights on the porch, shut off the variable speed fan and what other suspicious things I could think of. This was all to no avail.Finally I put the unit just outside the bedroom window to see if the red light would go off and it did. This was about a foot off the porch floor. I went over to the pavilion and the unit suddenly came alive and was able to switch channels just about as fast as I could push buttons.I didn't have much wire left on the longest IR blaster or the power supply, but I did make this observation. Every time I moved the receiver unit outside on the porch but closer to the where the satellite box was behind the wall, once again the red light came on and was killing all efforts from the transmitter out in the pavilion.It took a little bit effort but I decided it would be best to move the receiver outside on a shelf and a considerable distance away from the satellite box. So I took some telephone wire, fired up the soldering iron, grabbed the heat shrink tubing and added about 10 feet to the power supply cable as well as the IR blaster cable, of course observing polarity in both cases. It is now mounted about six feet off of the porch floor and and about 12 feet away from the bedroom, no more red lights. Before doing that I played around with it and from a distance of six feet or more away from the box there was no red light nor could I deliberately pick up anything unless I moved it back towards the bedroom that had the satellite box. Just wanted to have a little insurance, so 12 feet worked great. During the adventure I tried just putting it on the porch floor away from the bedroom and bingo it still received the signal from the pavilion.Bottom line is whenever a signal is being received whether it is infrared going to the transmitter or it is radio waves going into the receiver, if you look very closely at either unit you'll see the red light come on briefly when someone presses a button on the remote. If you have a red light that is continuously on, on the receiver, your signal from the transmitter is blocked big time and the range is pathetic to nonexistent.The only other criticism I have is that it seemed like the distance from the remote control to the transmitter could be a little bit more. I did find that if you tilt the transmitter about 45 degrees, a little bit of that window is more exposed and seemed to pick up a little bit better on infrared. About the most distance I could get was about 20 feet reliably. Adequate but wish it was a little more sensitive. You can get creative though and locate your transmitter fairly close by where you are sitting and it works great.The DirecTV box that I have is made out of plastic instead of the metal boxes we had several years ago. Every receiver is also a low-level transmitter. If I had to do it again and I saw that flickering red light on the receiver, I would've killed the power to the DirecTV box, just to see if the red light went out, of coarse not a permanent solution. But anyway I got it working. It makes me wonder though how many people have given up on this, thinking the range is lousy when they are picking up interference at the receiver. Did not see a word about this in the instructions. No doubt there are other satellite boxes made out of plastic. Space in the bedroom is very limited and the satellite box was on a small shelf and the choice to go outside made more sense. The porch has a good stable roof and I doubt if rain would be a big factor. Also no sunlight on the plastic. Others with fewer space restrictions can probably find a spot without splicing in extra cable.I hope this helps somebody. Beware of continuous flickering red lights on the receiving unit. And regardless of where the interference is, one should be able to move the receiver where there is none.

I bought the Startech IREXT2 to use with my cable box. Since I live alone I placed a signal booster and run 6 TV's throughout the house on one cable box and use the Startech to route the remote signal to the box which is in the crawlspace alongwith the infrared tx/rf rx. I simply place the infrared rx/rf tx in the room with the tv and point the remote at it. It works great. I have ordered another Startech so I do not need to move the device from room to room. I like this setup because as long as I have the tv already on all I have to do if I go to another room is turn the tv on, the channel is already selected and I don't have to mess around finding the channel I am watching. This setup works great if you live alone but not so well if you have multiple people wanting to watch different channels. However the Startech works great under any situation where you want to extend and infrared signal.

I've tried everything I could think of to try to get the units to work with an Xfinity X1 DVR. Tried placing an extender probe right over the IR sensor on the front panel of the X! and also placed the the receiver in various positions in front of the DVR. I moved the transmitter into different positions, but simply couldn't get the remote to work through the system. Total distance was about 60 to 70 feet, up half a flight of stairs in a split level home. Not line of sight, but the wireless signal did not have to go through a solid wall, only around a corner.I can only conclude that the system is either not compatible with the Xfinity X1 IR signal, one of the components is defective, or the advertised range is suspect. Disappointed that I will have to be returning the equipment.

I set up my home theater and needed these to beam universal remote signal over to the cabinet where all our equipment lives. The IR wireless receiver (as opposed to the wireless transmitter which is what goes beneath your TV set) includes a hard-line "extender" attachment with 3 emitters. The receiver signal would not penetrate the cabinet so I had to use the wired emitters which run down into the cabinet and attach to the front of my devices (a cable box, DVD and stereo receiver). This worked fine for me, but not sure what to do if you have more than 3 devices you need to control and have to use the wired emitters.

For the first few dayus, it worked as expected. Then, over the next few days, it slowly began to keep it's IR transmitter going all the time. The effect was, of course, that since the room containing the A/V equipment was flooded with IR, none of the remote controls worked. I tried covering up the sending unit, but that didn't help. I next tried unplugging the sending unit, and that didn't help either. It was definitely a hard failure in the receiver. It's going back for an exchange today.On the positive side, I've used lots of StarTech products over the years, and this is the first one to fail on me. Hopefuilly the failure was due to an isolated bad component and not a flaw in the design.