Hi,

I have a Philips Matchline TV and Grundig video. Both of these use a remote control encoding format which adds a parity bit to the end of the code.

Therefore if you press a button twice on the remote (say channel up) the first time the code issues is XXXXX0, the second it is XXXXX1. This pattern alternates each successive time the same key is pressed.

The result of this is that most learning remotes cannot handle this code. When you teach them a code it is learnt with parity 0 version. (first press). This works fine until you need to press the same button twice. The second time the learnt signal has the wrong parity (should be parity 1) and the equipment rejects it.

This really sucks when you try things like teletext (no pages with two consecutive digits the same!) and for functions like volume and channel changing.

Some learning remotes do handle it by asking you to teach every function twice, thereby capturing both variants of the code. However, this uses twice as much memeory and most learning remote manufacturers have stopped doing this.

I thought that the RC2000 might be OK as the dealer promised that it would control Phillips equipment. It did not.

Everyone is now saying that the RC2000 Mk 2 controls "even difficult to learn" codes. Before I buy the thing again, does anyone know if this is true?

Also, I am supprised that more people do not have this problem (the word in news groups is that the RC2000 controls almost anything). Is my TV and Video really so unusual or am I missing something?

Any help or insight would be appreciated.

Mike

This is one of those things that isn't merely "difficult to learn", it's "impossible to learn". Really, the only thing I can think of is sending two codes per button push - one being the real signal, the second being a "null" or "do-nothing" signal, say display or some other such thing. The problem is you MUST send another code before it'll recognize the same thing again. Alas, the only remote I know that can even begin to to something like this is the Philips Pronto/Marantz RC5000. No third-party learning remote I know of can alternate parity bits automatically, since these are effectively seperate signals. Being that Philips owns Marantz, I'm surprised they haven't worked this in.

I would be interested to know if these are otherwise normal RC5/6 codes.