I have a system that feels very jury-rigged and doesn't work at all as I would have expected. I started by buying a Bose Lifestyle DVD home theater system, mainly because the speakers were small and because my wife had a connection with Bose. This gave me good sound, but left open the video side of it. I bought a Panasonic and hooked it up to the Bose and the DirecTV installation that I already had (everything was already HD by that time). A few months later, I switched the system over to Verizon Fios, which had just become available in my area. I also moved the Panasonic to my bedroom and replaced it with a Sony Bravia 46V3000.

This left me with 3 remotes in the main area, one for Bose, one for Sony and one for Verizon, plus another Verizon box and control in the bedroom (above the family room). The Bose remote, which is supposed to control everything but doesn't, uses both an RF and an IR pickup. Also, the Verizon box was supposed to allow me to record shows separately from the Bose box, but that has never worked, and I can't even get programs recorded in the family room to show up in the bedroom. Supposedly, I can record two independent programs on the Bose box and two others on the Verizon box, but the Verizon box doesn't seem to do anything for me.

My guess is that I should start by replacing the remotes in the bedroom and the family room with something that will work better. Any suggestions? I'm highly technical, so don't worry about sending me codes -- I need to find out what they are anyway.

I added the details above in case someone else had a similar installation. I expect it will take a lot of guesswork to get it right, and I'm prepared to do this myself.

Let me see if I understand what you have:
Main area:
Bose Lifestyle DVD system, (unknown model)
Verizon FIOS, (unknown model)
Sony Bravia 46V3000
Bedroom:
Panasonic HD TV of some kind, (unknown model)
Verizon FIOS box, (unknown model)

You don't say how things are hooked up, that helps us a lot when trying to recomend what to do.


Who told you that? Bose doesn't make anything that can record shows from FIOS, or any other video source. That makes things pretty confusing.


Nothing works better than the factory remote, especially with FIOS.


Are you sure?

The FIOS remote will turn off and on the TV without a problem, it should even be able to change sources, that would eliminate the Sony remote in the main area and the Panasonic remote in the bedroom.

FIOS, Uverse, and new Concast boxes have been rather difficult for basic universal remotes to control,(do a search, there are many threads on the isues). So you will have problems getting your Bose remote to control it.

First thing you should do, is get a FIOS tech out to your house to make sure it was hooked up correctly, and then to give you a lesson on how it works. Then, after that, look into a universal remote for the main area.

Well, I had little choice about what was installed (for reasons best left alone), so in many cases I don't know the model numbers. I'll do my best to identify them.There are two Verizon boxes, one downstairs in the family room, and one upstairs in the bedroom. The downstairs one is a Motorola HD/DVR -- it has the number QIP6416-1 on it, but I don't know whether this is a model number. The upstairs one is a Motorola HD with the number QIP6200-2. The upstairs TV is a Panasonic TH-42PX600, dated 10/2006. The only additional information I can provide about the Bose is that it has a VS-2 video enhancer and comes with something called AdaptIQ. There's one black or dark-gray box that has the main functionality, including a DVD player on the left side, and a separate patch panel that was necessary for some reason. We installed the system while we were redoing our family room, and the screen is mounted in an area above the fireplace which will just accommodate a 46" screen (we couldn't fit a 52" screen). The subwoofer is in a hole in the facing of the fireplace designed to accommodate it. The remaining equipment is on 2 shelves to the left of the fireplace, connected to the TV by a conduit, and there are 5 speakers mounted in the ceiling (which work quite well). The Bose box has an RF remote pickup which runs through the conduit and is attached to the bottom of the TV screen.

We had a dispute with the company that installed the Bose system, both initially (when it was connected to an HD DirecTV) and later (when it was switched to Verizon Fios). They installed the connection with NTSC cables, and refused to be responsible for connecting with an HDMI cable. I don't remember how that was resolved. I wanted the HDMI connection, mainly for the future.


That makes sense, but unfortunately I didn't do any of the cabling myself. I can describe how the local cables are hooked up, but what's behind the wall is a mystery to me.


It's been recording HD since we installed it, about 3 years ago. I need to use the Bose remote to do this, but it works perfectly well. I suspect there is a later version of the Bose remote -- it's about 3 years old by now.


I've had little problem with the Fios remotes, but I'm still unable to do certain things that I thought I would be able to do. Here's an agenda:

1) Enable the Verizon DVR. The box says that it is a DVR, but I've never been able to record to it. This could easily be pilot error.

2) Set it up so that the system in the bedroom can access recorded programs on either the Bose box or the Verizon box.


Yes. I worked on the Apollo project, both hardware and software.


I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the sensible advice.

It wasn't the Bose that was ding the recording, it was the DirecTV box doing all the recording, but it was being told to record by your Bose remote.

You should be able to get your Bose remote reprogrammed for the Sony TV without a problem, and possibly to control the FIOS box.

I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you, we don't have FIOS here, so I have no experience wit it except what I read about here.

Nope, it was the Bose box that does the recording. I think they had just come out with this system. There's an 80Gb hard drive in the Bose box that holds all the recordings.


Already done.


OK, no problem. Bose doesn't seem to have a very broad customer base for its video products. I was just hoping to find someone who had gone through a similar experience.

wycliff is a spammer

wycliff is a spammer. Is this an "intelligent" script that gathers a little info from the thread or is this just a manual spammer trying to push comforters?

That only records CDs, not DirecTV shows. Try to read your owners manual. You will not find anything in there about video recording by the Bose system.
[Link: bose.com]

Now I can see that the problem you have had is that you just won't listen to any advice. Much less free advice.

I dont see anything in the manual or at the bose website that claims that your bose box can record video.

As anyhomeneeds suggested.. it appears that your DirecTV box was routed thru the bose system via the video inputs. That would mean that you could use the bose remote to control the DirecTV receiver and video would be routed thru the bose unit.

One big huge red flag is that when you switched from bose to verizon the bose box stopped being able to record. Thats because the bose box was never doing the recording in the first place.

So if i had to guess i would say that the helpful verizon guy came out and installed his box and didnt bother to route it thru the bose system. Obviously thats a guess.