I bought the VR-509 specifically because it had RF support (and an IR repeater system for the rest of my cabinet). It came with the RC-R0913 remote. Even when it worked, it was probably the most idiotic remote I'd ever used. When in movie mode, you didn't use the Volume button for the TV volume... no, you had to use the FFWD and RWND buttons. I can't tell you how many times I went to turn up the volume on the TV and inadvertantly skipped to the next track on the DVD.

But that's neither here nor there. Fact is, the remote went completely dead about 3 months after I bought the receiver. This is after I installed the receiver into my component wall and bought/installed the IR repeaters to all my other components. The LCD is dead, the backlight comes on, but nothing displays, and pushing the buttons does nothing. Yes, I've replaced the batteries several times.

So I'm left with an entertainment center all wired for RF... and no RF remote. I wrote to Kenwood and they told me that there weren't any after-market RF remotes that would work (if anyone knows this to be true or not, please let me know!).

I *can* tell you that I'm currently using a pretty standard multi-function IR remote. And the receiver fails to respond I'd say 70% of the time. I haven't seen much correlation between how long it's been on, heat, nothing. So it's definitely (at least in my mind) not the remote that's giving the rest of you fits. It's the receiver itself.