1. is the mx-500 rf capable like the mx-850?

2. does the mx-850 have a clone function like the mx-500 (main+ent)? i wouldlike to clone my mx-500 to my mx-850 but main+ent doesn't seem to work on the 850 nor did i see a cloning function in the software editor...

thanks very much in advance!

Sorry, but no to both questions. For RF, you would need the mx-600. As for the mx-850, the only options that show after pressing main & ent for a good long time is Teach & Fav.

thanks edmund, very helpful.... i used the mx-500 back in 2004 or so, for about 5 years, and then moved on to newer and more "modern" remotes... but none of the newer remotes ever really did it for me, for many reasons, so i decided to return to the mx-500... since mine was long gone i went to ebay, and was surprised to find many different models, for a song compared to what i paid for the mx-500 back in the day, so i picked up an mx-500 (absolutely mint), an mx-600, an mx-700 and an aeros mx-850....

played around with all of them but settled on the mx-500, again, really like the black, but recently noticed that the 850 offers rf, and now that i've looked at all of them closely, it looks like the 600 and 700 are rf capable too...

but after a bit of reading i think i may have misunderstood the rf functionality, it appears that the rf is used with the base unit, which then converts signals to i, as opposed to being able to program rf remote controls into the mx, do i have that right?

That's right, ALL universal RF remotes only know one RF frequency, their own which they use to communicate with base station. They can only control IR components. And the mx-700 is IR only as well.

again, that for the very helpful info edmund.... that pretty much makes my decision easy, i'll use the mx-500, love the build, much more solid than the 850 imo, and the buttons are "fresher" than the ones on the 600, 700 and 850... i suppose the pc programming interface is nice, not sure how much easier it is, but at least you can back up your settings, then again in all of the years i used the 500 back in the day,i never had a need for a backup... so are there any other advantages to the newer models, other than pc connectivity? i'm assuming they have bigger device databases but that's not a big deal for me, i don't need every function each remote has, just a handful which i program manually/easily by "teaching" it... thanks again!

pretty much wrapped up programming my mx-500, very easy process once you get in the groove, has learned everything i've thrown at it so far, but i hit a snag... the last remote i attempted to teach it was a dish network 52.0 remote which is paired with a wally box, no love... after a bit of googling i've found that the prob seems to be that it's a rf remote... so am i out of luck? or are there workarounds? thank you very much in advance.

quick update... decided to just just swap out the wally receiver for the older 211 receiver which is ir, wasn't a big fan of the wally so no big deal in terms of a step back, the thing always updated the program guide whenever it was turned on which took forever, couldn't watch tv until it was finished, maybe there was a setting to turn this off but i never found it... also, never used any of the wally app features, they were just too laggy for me, so i'm not sure what if anything i've lost other than the very small footprint and the rf performance of 1 device...