I have tried to pass the infra red signal from the Scientific Atlantic Remotes to a 8300 HD box. While the remote works when there is line of site I cannot get the IR signals to grow through a connecting block. Does anyone have any help here.

Don't use a CFL friendly IR Receiver.

Mike

Those boxes run at a higher frequency than most devices. they are up around 56khz. Try a different receiver or a tuneable one.

There is a 56k remodulator that plugs into the connecting block, and the emitter plugs into the remodulator. Russound makes it. I had to use it on my SA box.

Mark

Little bit odd these SA HD receivers. You'll have one that will send the IR right on through with no problems at all, then have one that won't do it at all. No rhyme or reason to it.

The Russound remodulator is the way to go when you run up on that oddball unit. It will get the job done.

I have to resurrect this thread as I just installed a 8300 and it is very intermittent using a MX850 and MRF300. I have tried the emitter power on the full scale and its still only intermittent. I even pulled the front of the box and put the emitter (Xantech mouse) directly on the ir receiver. Didn't help much at all.

Funny thing is another 8300 I did two days ago worked fine with the exact same setup.

And I also have a ir receiver for this cable box going to the bedroom and that works fine with the emitter.

Ugggggg. Need to figure something out fast as I can go back tomorrow but then I need to drive home 3 hours away.

Anyone run into this problem with the 8300 and the MRF300 emitter?

Thanks in advance.

I have not had issues with SA boxes, but I have had issues with BEll Expressvu receivers and as well Bose lifestyle headunits. I have tried all of the troubleshooting recommendations. The only way I can get it to work is to use 2 flashers and position them away from the unit, but sometimes it works with flasher installed inside the unit without really trying...weird.

The above mentioned was used with a MRF-250 and MRF-100

My company has had a lot of success using Niles IR equipment to pass IR to SA cable boxes. We've never had any problems with intermittent IR at all. And with an MX-3000, we've had good success with the MRF-300, but that's beside the point. Maybe try a basic MS200 and MSU140 with any flashers and see if that passes the IR well?

-Tripp-

I read in AVS that there is some Russound 56k remodulator that some people are sticking between the emitter and connecting block with some of the problematic 8300HDs. Problem is I have no idea what a Russound 56k remodulator is and I thought I knew the whole Russ line.

Otherwise I may have the client take it back and try a different one as it seems like only some 8300s are affected.

Thanks for the help.

Look on Russound's website, in the documentation section. They have a couple papers on it. Hold on I'll find it for you...

[Link: russound.com]

[Link: russound.com]

These should tell you everything about them. It worked for my Scientific Atlanta 8000HD DVR. You'll need a wall wart that you have to order separately. You have to cut and splice the end of the wall wart to the dc inputs on the remodulator.

Good Luck,
Mark

Thanks Mark, that's great info. My current workaround is to put back in the 8000 that works fine with the MRF300. But guess what, doesn't work through the russound ir system and emitter from the bedroom. Soooooo, looks like I will try a 56k remodulator on the ir system leg and leave the mrf300 leg alone.

Then if he wants the 8300 down the road, I can just add a remodulator to the MRF emitter (if that will work) and leave the one on the ir system emitter and hopefully we'll be honky dory.

Thanks again.

Another thing to try is to turn down the output from the rf base station to the 8300's IR receiver. Overloading a receiver will be just as intermittent as not having enough juice.

I see that these are fairly old posts, but I just stumbled onto the SA8300HD issue myself. My client upgraded his cable box to HD and got the SA 8300HD box. From the moment we turned it on we started to have intermittent problems with the IR that previoiusly was flawless. Sometimes it takes the channel command right away and sometimes it takes several hits to work. (often giving a false channel number in return). Frustration!! I was using a MX-850 with a MRF-300 and suspected that the gain was too high. I tried to lower it to the lowest (then raised it to the highest), and everything inbetween. I moved the emitter around the faceplate and even pulled it off to the cabinet frame and top/bottom of the cable box. Nothing helped. I pulled out an old MRF-200 without any
ID code and set the remote to "0" (probably didn't matter because a non-programmable RF receiver like the 200 grabs any RF it can see. This approach improved the response orders of magnitudes. There were still some false hits, but dramatically improved the situation. My question is, why does this cheap box work better (could it be a very tiny IR signal out of the emitter?), but more importantly.... what can we do to make the cable boxes robust? I see references to remodulators (I'll have to read up on them and see what they cost etc. etc.), but is it a saturation problem?? It's a pretty popular box it seems, and I can't keep installing systems that don't work right. I have spent WAY too much time and the customer sure isn't happy with the results!

We had the same problems in the NYC market with 8300's. Primarily use Pronto 3000's and 7000's/ 7500's as our system controllers. There is a code set for the 8300 in Daniel's 7000 v1.03 remote pcf that I tried using and have had NO problems with 8300 commands ever since. When learning commands head to head with the SA remote, the captures are often corrupt (or too long for the pronto I've been told) and do not work. When I learn from Daniel's 8300 codeset - no problems.