I believe the reason why Sony made their visiontouch remotes operate at such high frequencies is because of the remote's design. Since the visiontouch remotes are basically a joystick that is used with a Graphical User Interface, Sony realized that it would be harder to program a learning remote to replace a visiontouch remote when compared to a conventional remote. (people may try to teach a learning remote a visiontouch remotes' joystick as a single button, etc.)