I have a MRF-260 Base station (No stock IR Emitters. Purchased a Used one).

My projector is about 10 feet from my base station and I am having tough time controlling it via IR emitter. I used three different IR emitters.
1) Purchased an single IR emitter in Frys for $3
2) Took the Old Logitech Base station IR
3) Took out the Google TV stock IR

I aimed at the projector from all of the three and noticed that Google TV stock IR is very good, the logitech IR was better, the $3 IR emitter from frys was bad and I had to go very near to the device to make it work.

Here are my questions.

1) The Front Blaster of the MRF-260 does not control all my devices in the Cabinet. My old RF Basestation from logitech was doing much better. Is the Front Blaster not good in MRF-260. If yes, is the MRF-350 front blaster better?

2) Any suggestion of a very powerful front IR emitter where I can use it far from the projector

3) How do professional installers work on projectors? Take an IR emitter to the projector? I keep one pointed at it from far away

4) Why the heck is URC not releasing a basestation which sends crazy IR signals all around like the logitech one? I have to keep using many emitters because of this and keep them pointed to the device which it is seeing. (Point 1 emitter to projector, point one emitter to the screen, keep rest of them near the devices.)

Yep.

IR emitters are almost entirely all designed to be placed (aka glued down) on the IR receiving window of the equipment you wish to control. You need to extend the emitter using cat5 or 22/2 or similar to the projector. Or settle for the IR from the MX remote bouncing off the front wall. Attempting to shoot 10' across a room with an emitter is, well, unreliable at best. Same with just leaving them lying around in the cabinet.


As for the front blaster, I almost always disable it. The IR emitters are designed to send small and precise amounts of IR just where you need it. This, combined with the URC base station's IR routing, allows control of rooms like, say, a gym, where you could have 2 TVs and 2 cable boxes that are the exact same model. With an IR emitter on each piece of equipment you can control the two systems separately and not interfere with the other unit. If you need more IR ports, you can splice emitters (in series ... see Ernie about that) or get another base station.

1. -  Your best bet is to buy a pack of IR emitters and place them on the IR windows of each piece of equipment.  It will be much more reliable than trying to use the front blaster to control the equipment in the cabinet.
The MRF350 is a better unit because you get 2 more IR ports, all assignable, and they can all be adjusted for sensitivity versus only 2 ports on the 260.  The biggest advantage of the 350 though is the ability to move the RF antenna away from the equipment.  The 260's antenna is obviously on the base and it is easier to pick up interference from say a cable box or power cords.

2. - You really do not want to do this as you are finding out.

3. - Yes, absolutely wire an emitter to your projector.  I prefer to pull off the sticky tape that is on them and hot glue them in place.  It is much more reliable and you shouldn't have to worry about the emitter falling off.  The nice thing about hot glue is that if you need to pull off the emitter you still can.

4. - The base stations work exactly as they are intended to work.  You are not using the emitters as they are intended to work which is causing your issues. 


Good luck.  Let us know if your issues are resloved after you set up your IR emitters correctly. 

Worked good after keeping all the emitters in place.

One reason I did not want to keep many emitters is because I hate many wires. I understand these are professional remotes and dont blast ir signals.

I wanted a powerful ir emitter to my projector screen. just wanted an easy & temporary solution rather a permanent solution with wire. I purchased a Audio Tech IR Flooder and it worked fine. Since there is no interference with current setup i am fine with this.

Thanks for the answers

All URC remotes send out IR signals as well.