I have a project with 3 rooms. This is a temporary apartment for a client. They have a 24 month lease so nothing fancy but it has to be reliable. I want to use MX-980's in each room because i want one-way, dumb, reliable control over the devices. What should i use (base station/control system) to get 100% reliable range from the MX-980's in all areas?

Whats not important to me:
Cost for hardware or how long it takes to program.

What is important to me:
100% reliable range.
Independent (no cross talk nonsense) control over the 7 devices. 3 Tivo units and 2 TV's are similar models and Cat5e will be used to extend IR. My fear is that the similiar models will be susceptible to cross talk like i have experienced with MRF-300 and older model base stations in the past.

Room 1 & 2 have the same model 22" LG LCD TV and a TIVO-Cable box. The cable boxes are located in a common closet (the head end). IR to control the TV and HDMI are being extended to both rooms from the head end. No distributed audio. No matrix switch. Just hiding cable boxes in another room. Using the TV speakers for audio.

Room 3 (den) has a 55" LG TV, a local (Cabinet in the Den) Tivo Cable box and Blu-ray player. Cable box and BD player are connected to TV via individual HDMI cables. No receiver no speakers etc. Using the TV speakers for sound.



Do i use multiple base stations? 1 for each remote? Or 1 for the den and 1 for the other 2 rooms?

Do i use an MSC-400? Can i extend the antennae (1 to each room) to improve range?

Thanks.

I'd get Three MRF-260 base stations and set each one for a different address and be done with it. Stick two of them in the closet and the other one in the den. I can't imagine that you'll have any problems. I LOVE the MX-980!

If you're really worried about range, you can mount the MRF-260s in the kitchen & master bathroom, or you could use MRF-350s and put the remote antennas in the kitchen & master bathroom. You don't say what the distances are.

The MSC-400 would be overkill and counter-productive.

 I agree that the MSC-400 is overkill unless the remotes are "traveling" and each can control any of the rooms.  I have two of the remote antennas at my house, and have had no issues getting coverage pretty much anywhere off of a single MRF-350.

How would an MSC400 be counter productive?? If you want reliability go with the MSC400. Instead of sending long macro's you're only sending triggers, the 350's and 260's have a tendency for crosstalk IR (acknowledged by URC tech support) so with multiple Tivo's can cause issues. I run multiple 980's with an MSC400 and 4 Motoroloa cableboxes without any crosstalk issues. If you like you're client, get the 400, if you just like visiting them, get the 350's

There are bugs with the MSC-400 that have been driving me crazy - particulary with RS-232. You can NOT use W7 64 bit to sync. It is not that expensive to spec one in, however. It's not like RTI and you have to decide between an XP-8 and a RP-1. An MRF-350 will not be any less reliable in your cirucumstance as well. The MSC-400 only has a single macro engine, so your not talking about anything too sophisticated. If you are using serial/power sensing, that would require one. I avoid the MSC-400 unless these things are important now or the foreseeable future. If your macros are not too involved you won't notice much of a difference with teh MSC-400.

I recently did a very similar project using URC. From your diagram it looks like you would only need one MRF-260 for the den and one MRF-350 for the closet. Not that big of a deal, but only 2 of the 4 ports on a MRF-260 have voltage adjustment; something to think about. I would only consider using a MSC-400 if you were looking to control serial devices.

The MX-980 is my favorite go to 1-way remote.

This was my original thought. Get a 260 for each remote. My only fear is the cross talk nightmares of the past where the master bedroom and family room at a clients house cost me 3 weeks of taming. MX-700's + base stations that i cant remember the model of anymore.


Kitchen is about 40' and Master bath is about 80' but i have played this game before :). I had already planned to put the base station in the kitchen and send IR down a cat5 back to the Tivo. Master Bath base station is going in the master bed attached to the bottom of a large piece of furniture and the Den base station goes in the cabinet in the Den.

No traveling remotes.

What about the 260's in each zone as i described above? I haven't used an MRF-350 in a while but i definitely had cross talk issues with an MRF-300 and 2 Sony AV Receivers.

Any similar issues with the 260's?

A major concern here is the time suck involved in making this work. I would like to spend a day getting this done. 2 tops. I don't want to be in a situation where i pick the 260's and find a problem and then have to try the 400.

I have become such a wuss.. what happened to the old days of just ordering something and spending the next 3 weeks of my life making it work as advertised?

1. It's counter-productive in his situation because it is totally unnecessary. It won't solve any problems that can't be solved with three MRF-260s or MRF-350s.
If he uses one (1) MSC-400 and it goes down for whatever reason HE HAS NO CONTROL OVER ANY OF THE THREE TVs.

2. What long macros are you talking about??? Again, in his setup, he'd be turning on a TV set in two of the rooms, and turning on a TV and selecting one of two HDMI inputs in the third room. Obviously he can add a few more commands to make it rock-solid & bullet-proof but we're still not talking about a long and complicated macro here! One source/no AVR in two of the rooms! Come on!

3. Crosstalk? With three separate RF receivers, three different base station addresses, IR routing at each base station, dedicated Cat5e for each system?? What kind of paranormal activity is stamp expecting in this apartment? I'm not sure if the newest TiVo boxes have multiple IR code sets available, but if they do, well, there's that!

The MRF-260 has two (out of a total of four) adjustable IR outputs and two of his rooms only have two components. An MRF-350 would give him six adjustable IR outputs which could be used in the den so he can adjust the output to all three components.

The selection between using MRF-260s and MRF-350s boils down to where he wants to mount the base stations/antennas as well as the physical size and/or the appearance of the base stations/antennas.

I have not experienced any of the issues with the MRF-350 that I used to have with the MRF-300.

I'm going to start staying away from the 260s whenever possible. It's not worth it to save the $70. I've had a good handful of intermittent RF interference issues from plasmas and DVRs w/ MRF-260s. I ALL CASES I replaced w/ MRF-350s (even w/ the antenna sitting in the same exact spot) and it fixed the problem for good.

MRF-350's it is.

Thanks everyone.

Lesson learned.  As freddy said, no more MRF-260 in my installs; strictly 350. 

Only use MSC-400 for more than 6 components connected or Serial control.

Also, use IR routing on the MRF350's. To ensure there is no crosstalk, put one Tivo on IR1, then in the other room put the tivo on IR2, etc.

The 300 and 250 base stations had too wide range and did conflict The new 350 and 260 are narrow band and as long as none of them are code 0 or are the same codes as each other you should be fine. Have done setups with multiple base states with no issues.