My system was installed by a "professional" installer, who I have since determined was kind of an amateur. I should have shopped for an installer myself, rather than allowing my general contractor to do it. But that's water under the bridge, and a way of explaining why I, a consumer, am now faced with fixing my system's problems, which I've been suffering with for a couple of years now.

I have an MX-850 which uses an RFX-150 to relay RF signals to a pair of MRF-250's.

Everything in my system is controlled by RF, except for the TV, which is IR. The component stack is in a bedroom closet, out of line-of-sight from the remote. The RFX-150 is positioned high in the bedroom closet, above the component stack.

Everything works fine, at all times, EXCEPT my ReplayTV 5500, which often, and randomly, fails to respond to the MX-850. It responds perfectly, however, to its own remote, if I walk into the closet and point it at the Replay, and responds perfectly to the MX-850 if I enable IR on the MX-850, and walk into the closet and point the MX-850 at it.

When the ReplayTV is failing to respond, its misbehavior can last for a minute, or an hour. Occasionally a command will get through to it; I have to press buttons on the remote repeatedly during these episodes to get a single command to register. Other times, it works just fine.

I did not at first think the problem was radio inteference, because all my other components work just fine; if it was radio interference, I figured, it would affect all the components equally.

Rather, since this doesn't happen with any of the other components in my system, I assumed it was a ReplayTV-specific problem (or a problem specifically with communicating with the ReplayTV). I tried many things: I replaced the circuit board in the ReplayTV that contains the infrared sensor. I adjusted, in both directions, the intensity of the signal being sent by the MRF through the IR-blaster to the Replay. (Maybe it's saturating? Maybe it's not strong enough? Maybe if I fed it wet instead of dry food?) I tried a different MRF unit. I tried a different IR blaster cable. I even tried a different MX-850 and a different RFX-150. I tried re-programming the codes into the MX-850, using the Replay's remote. I tried positioning the MRF unit in front of the component stack and using the built-in flashers, rather than the IR blasters. Nothing worked.

Having finally encountered this thread (and having run out of things to swap out), I am of course suspecting RF interference. (I feel like I've ruled out or swapped out everything else!) This would account for the total randomness of the occurrence of the problem...and I notice that (duh) the little RF indicator light on the RFX-150 flickers (dimly) from time to time when I'm not using the remote. (It lights very strongly, of course, when I *am* using the remote.)

I've turned the sensitivity of the RFX-150 as low as it goes (it's only about 15 feet away from where I sit when using the remote), and folded its antenna in, in an attempt to reduce its sensitivity to unwanted interference. That seems to have eliminated the dim flickering of its RF light (at least so far...it's been a couple of hours) and the Replay seems to be responding well...though I've had this experience of jubilation before, only to be followed by disappointment as the intermittent problem returns.

My fear is that this won't work, and that the problem will return, and I'm trying to decide, if it does, whether to continue to bark up this RF interference tree, trying ferrite cores and changing the routing of my wires, and moving the RFX-150 farther from the components, etc.

But it only makes sense to follow that route if it's true that there could be a reason that the interference is affecting only the ReplayTV and not my other components; is it possible, for example, that the ReplayTV's receptor or circuitry is more sensitive to imperfect, interfered-with signals than the receptors of other components? I can't help but think that, absent something like that, it's totally non-logical for communications with the Replay, but not my other components, to be affected by RF interference, and I am reluctant to embark on a course of RF interference elimination (which seems very trial-and-error-based) if simple logic says that because all my other components work just fine, that can't be the problem. I'd appreciate any thoughts you guys might have on this.