Blame it on manufacturers of a/v components taking too many shortcuts to reduce price points on their products. The sheilding is inadequate and low level RF emissions from these cheapened up components like DVD players, cable boxes, sat boxes, DVRs, etc can wig out the processors in the cheaper RF base stations if they are placed too close.

You may be able to turn the components ON every time without a hitch, but when these consumer grade crap boxes are operating and throwing off all these extraneous emissions, the reliability control gets spotty.

If it gets too bad, you could always use emitter extensions and get another 6-8 ft. which is usually enough distance so the RF station picks up the remote's output over the hash coming from the cheap components.

Plasmas emit non visible spectrum emissions that wreck IR...
Cheap consumer grade A/V components emit too much crap and wreck RF...

Is it any wonder we still look up to serial control??