I had 3 of the aging Hughes DirecTV Tivo DVRs that I'm swapping out with the R15s (I know --- R15 warts and all) I have a video distribution system in my house so each DirecTV DVR box is on a particular channel, in my case 70, 75, and 80. With the "old" DVRs I could uniquely assign an address code to each Tivo DVR and remote so I'd have a one to one relationship and as long as I had the right remote (each marked 70, 75, or 80) and right channel on the TV, I could control the what I was watching from any TV in my house via the Xantech IR repeater system back to one of the 3 R15's housed in a cabinet. Very cool - worked great - lots of freedom!

But frustratingly, the knuckleheads at DirecTV seem to have left out the ability to uniquely address more than 2 R15s at one time so I'm kind of stuck.

Recommendations?

It'll be much cheaper for you to replace one of the R15's with a dtivo, they're still around.

You're looking at a RF universal remotes like the mx-350 or higher-end remote with IR addressable feature. You setup 3 RF only devices on the remote, assign each a different IR output on the separately sold RF basestation, the mrf-250, tape up the IR repeater cables to the sat receivers. So only the IR commands from the mrf250 each the receivers.