.

I'd rather be lucky than good... :)

When you get the mrf350, move the antenna module as far away from the base/ electronics as you can. If its relatively easy, run the cable or splice in a cat5 and place the antenna over / under the middle of the room. You'll love the way it works.

I like almost all of URC's products, but this one is on my hate list. There are just to many issue with rf interference with this piece. Whether it's the shielding on an HDMI cable, a Sony Blu-Ray, or PS3 its always something. Sometimes they work good for awhile and then bam rf problems out of nowhere.

We actually have a rule about not selling them. We only sell MRF350's and up. All it takes is one service call on one of the 260's and your upside down on it. I was very hesitant to sell them after all of the nightmares of the MRF250 (the older version) and was happy until all of the service calls and install problems.

Plus the MRF350 offers more options and is just a better piece. And while the MRF350 can still have rf issues they are easy to remedy. And don't usually pop up nearly as much after the installation is completed.

I'm with Golden on this one, I've got well over 100 systems in the field with 260's, and probably at least as many systems with 250's. I've had exactly 5 issues with URC RF (Base Stations). (MRF100/200 lets not go there, I always got them to work, but many did require removing the antenna or getting 'jiggy' with the location :).

Of the narrow band systems

2 were related to plugging into a surge protector/line conditioner

1 was Defective out of the box

1 I just swapped today started being faulty 16 months post install

1 was a failure out of warranty (4 yr old receiver may have been affected by a power surge)

The VAST majority of issues with narrow band are related to code set issues, IR emitters (I have a batch of defective RTI ones to get rid of), IR intensity and IR emitter location on the device.

As far as getting creative with placement of the RF receivers I've occasionally had find the right spot but its been exceedingly rare. I can't count how many are situated on or just to the side of cable boxes/blu-rays/AVR's and they work perfectly.

I never had a problem with the MRF260. Rarely had a problem with a MRF250.


Had one MRF350 that gave me all kinds of issues with interference....



Ghost in the machine?

for a 1 room solution, remove the antenna!!

Those are ferrite cores, not magnets. It doesn't seem reasonable that they would help, but it doesn't matter if it's reasonable when it works.


Really? If you're good, you'll understand what's happening (or at least what to do to make things work) and you can be good any time you want to be. That 'magnet' idea is an example of being good without understanding why. But luck?

If you're only lucky, you won't understand why things work and you won't have success all the time. Your luck can run out at any moment. Your "good" can't run out. When your luck runs out you won't be able to solve the problem.

A ferrite core actually does work as a magnet in this situation.

The ferrite core is surrounding the antenna (which is serving as a conductor), and the high permeability of the ferrite provides a path of lower resistance for the magnetic flux of the signal in the antenna as compared to if it was surrounded by air only.

Because of this, the antenna's inductance is significantly increased due to the relative permeability of the ferrite. The permeability is the characteristic of a metal that quantitatively assesses its ability to support a magnetic field (and therefore become a magnet).

Ferrite cores, made of different compounds (manganese, iron, nickel zinc, etc), have very high relative permeability and this quality allows them to serve as magnets on the antenna, allowing the antenna to become more sensitive, in a sense, to the RF signal being transmitted.

i thought of this? i am using a power strip bc im outta juice there. i asked urc tech if that could be an issue they said no.

also.....this might be for ernie..... but client has an airport extreme there too w a power supply? could that cause it??

The tech support guy is incorrect; it ABSOLUTELY CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE, plugging into a power strip or conditioner can (and more often then not will) cause problems. It's one of the first things to make sure of from a troubleshooting perspective. At most, using a pass-through extension cord when outlets are at a premium is ok, but never into a surge strip/conditioner.

The airport extreme should not really interfere unless its defective as its operating at a significantly different RF frequency (non narrow band used to be susceptible but the current stuff should not have any issues with 2.4 or 5ghz).

I have found that i can't even keep a 260 in the same cabinet as any other electronics. I move it as far away as possible and don't have problems.

It has been said here many times to avoid the mrf-260. I just don't sell them anymore.

If you can't solve the rf interference by moving the 260 antenna, replace it with the mrf-350 and eat the difference. It's a lot less costly to replace it than continue to give away labor hours trying to solve something that will frustrate you to this extent. It's not the remote or URC, it's the mrf-260 in that environment.

I find this interesting. I would say the overwhelming majority of my installs will include a MRF-350 plugged into a power strip or power conditioner of some sort. They have never caused a problem for me.

Simply put, ditch the MRF-260's. Some people have had good luck with them, but most have had issues. The cost difference between the MRF260 to MRF350 is negligible when considering the fact that if you control system does not work 100%, then nothing works.

I don't have issues with 350s.

First, because antenna can be positioned anywhere with breakout cable, I don't have to limit myself to close proximity to equipment (by the limited IR emitter cable lengths).

Second, by changing from default channel 0, I improve performance where there might be more than one URC installation in close proximity.

Lastly, because RFX250 can be mounted anywhere, and it has RF LED, I can see if it's getting any noise while I'm looking for a good spot to mount it. Simply stated, if remote isn't transmitting, RF LED better be dead, as in not solid, flashing, dimly pulsing, etc.

As for the URC database... if purely sucks! They supposedly have 6 full time people working in that department. I would really like to actually talk to anyone of them and see why the database sucks so much. Tech support tells me that they can't verify all the codes, and I get that. But the amount of bad data that's there, far outweighs the good stuff, for the common components. And WTF do they NOT have a search functionality?!?

Touch the antenna (essentially grounding it) to the metal case of any piece of equipment in the rack and the interference will disappear.