I'm not sure if there's a name for this "feature" so bear with me as I try to explain. I have a Sony RM-VL900 and I love it. It does everything I need except *one thing* and it's kind of annoying.

I just bought a new TV (Samsung LN52A750) and was programming the remote to use it. I found one code that works against the TV, but the volume buttons behave oddly. You know when you push the volume button on the remote and it "repeats" the signal over and over so the volume will go up for as long as you hold the "volume up" button?

That's not working.

I push the "volume up" button and the volume goes up a notch and stops, like I let go of the button. (Same thing with "volume down" - it's not just one button having issues.) I verified that I don't have any "learned" function on the buttons, and it was working fine with my last TV (Sharp AQUOS).

The original remote for the TV works as expected - hold one of the volume buttons and the volume changes for as long as you hold the button.

I contacted Sony support and they said there's nothing to be done about it - you can't tell one of the buttons to "repeat" the signal. So I'm looking at new remotes because hammering on the volume button to get the volume to change is annoying.

I would like a remote that does the same thing (or better) as the RM-VL900 but will also let me indicate if a signal should "repeat" when the button's held down. (Or maybe it just needs to have more recent built-in codes?)

Any advice is appreciated.

This is a common problem with samsung tv's and universal & oem remotes. The problem is the samsung preset code is using the wrong protocol, at one time it was the right one but samsung changed it. Unless theres a preset code with the corrected protocol, the preset codes will not give you repeating volume commands.

As you wrote, your original samsung tv remotes works fine, the Sony vl900 is a learning remote, use the samsung tv remote to teach the vl900 the proper volume commands.

Universal remotes like the Radio shack 15-133, 15-134, or 15-135 have a preset code with proper protocol, the tv code is 10702.

The learning part on the VL900 won't work because the remote won't repeat learned signals - it'll behave incorrectly regardless.

Thanks for the pointers to the Radio Shack remotes. I'll have to look into those.

Your tv remote works correctly, right? So it will send the corrected commands to whatever learning remote you use.


Before to teaching, program any other tv brand's code to the device, so the volume keys won't work at all, until the commands are learned, you'll see. So you will know that its the taught commands that working and not the underlining preset commands.

tillig... when your doing the learning for the volume buttons.. try quickly tapping the volume button on the samsung remote instead of pressing it. If that doesnt work try holding it down slightly longer while learning and so on and so forth.

@edmund - The volume would work, it just wouldn't repeat. The problem with the Sony VL-900, which I verified with support, is that if you teach the control something on the volume buttons, you lose the repeater function. So it was able to broadcast the signal, it just didn't repeat it, which was the problem. (Again, when I say it "wouldn't repeat," it isn't that it wouldn't learn-and-replay a signal, it's that when I hold the volume button down, it doesn't continue to send the signal over and over the way I would expect.)

@39 Cent Stamp - Tried different durations of holding the button when teaching the Sony VL-900 and never could get it to succeed. I was able to get it to turn the volume up one notch... but to continue turning the volume up required another key press. I ended up jackhammering the volume buttons to increase/decrease the volume by any significant amount.

In the end, I got the Radio Shack 15-135 remote which does correctly handle my TV and properly deals with the volume. (I was actually amazed at how many things it automatically just "knew" based on the code. I only had to teach it ONE thing. Very cool.) At $22, it was just right for the price range and has more hard buttons than the VL-900, which is nice. With the VL-900 I was having to drop functionality and do a lot of "button repurposing" (e.g., the "Record" button became the "Exit" button on most menus).

It least you have something that works.