I found this thread while looking for something else. I've never posted in RC, but had so much problems with a DFH net box (Turkish sat) that I felt compelled to register and reply to you.

In our case, IR learners couldn't even SEE the IR strings. However, with the gracious help from the support team at Global Cache, we actually used an oscilloscope to capture the data! Turns out the remote had an alternating codeset, like an RC5. However, most learning remotes don't handle those that well. The behaviour is generally as you describe -- sporadic response.

In our case, we were very fortunate that the customer had an older box with different codeset, which we used to better results.