Next Generation Remote Control Extender
by Next Generation
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List Price: Our Price: $39.59 You Save: $25.36 (39%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Speakers See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Next Generation Remote Control Extender
Customer Review: Part of a Great Kitchen TV System
Summary: 5 Stars
When I switched from cable to FIOS, I lost access to most of the "standard" TV channels I use to get on cable. I neither had room for another FIOS converter box in the kitchen nor wanted to pay the recurring fee. So I found a solution that works for me - piggyback on my one FIOS converter box.
After a huge amount of research, the solution I gravitated to was to use the Tripp Lite component video adapters to transport video and sound over CAT5, and really nice digital TV from Vizio attached to the underside of my kitchen cabinets with the Vantage Point "wall" mount (works fine under cabinet too).
The TV in the kitchen is now slaved to the same channel selected on the one FIOS box in the family room. This was great, but we had to walk into another room to switch the channel.
Then I found a bit of magic: the Next Generation Remote Control. This magically device has a receiver plugged into the wall near the FIOS box, and a transmitter that fits into a FIOS remote.
How to get a second FIOS remote? Well, if you dig around you can just request one (for free) on the FIOS site - mine arrived in a few days. You put one real battery into the new FIOS remote, and then the transmitter (which has a rechargeable battery inside and is the same form factor as a battery).
Now the magic - when you press a key on the new FIOS adapter, the battery senses the codes being sent, and transmits it to the receiver, which generates new IR signals to trigger the FIOS receiver.
Amazingly, this all works like a charm! Both TVs show the same channel, but if you don't need two converters this solution is a real winner!
PS: if you have a long cable run (hundreds of feet) don't get normal CAT5 cable - use "KVM" qualified cable. This cable has the special characteristic of uniform delay on all pairs (since its used with analog signals, just like this solution does). My run was about 100 feet and used CAT-5e I had run earlier, and it works great).
PSS: I see negative reviews on the Tripp product. Well, I am a EE and know how to create and test CAT-5e cable with connectors I attach. If someone does this and reverses pairs, or misconnects wires, or somehow misses getting one wire punched down, then the picture is going to be crap. If you buy this product, then try it first with a short cat-5e LAN cable. That is, plug one Tripp into the set top box, then the cable to the other set top box, the second box to the TV you plan to use remotely. See if that works then any problems are due to the cable/connectors.
All Products:
"Next Generation Remote Control Extender"
"VIZIO M160MV 16-Inch LED"
"Vantage Point UL01-S Articulating Wall Mount"
"Tripp Lite B136-101 Component Video with Stereo Audio over Cat5 Extender Kit"
Customer Review: It's As Good As People Say!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've never bothered to review a product. After purchasing items, I never feel strongly enough about them. But I had to come back here and report on how good this remote control extender is.
I have a TV in my kitchen but the cable box is located about 20 feet away in our den. I didn't want to ruin the nice clean look of the LCD mounted on a flexible arm to be cluttered by a cable box. So I hid the box in an entertainment center that is not in the direct line of sight of of the kitchen TV.
I purchased a Terk remote extender and it worked on the same principle as this one. It uses a special battery that has a transmitter built into it. You put that battery into the remote and the transmitter magically extends the signal of the remote. Like most remotes, my cable box remote works on a IR (Infrared) signal. IR requires direct line of sight. You must point the remote at the cable box. The remote extender, however, converts the signal from IR to RF (radio freuqency) and RF signals do not require direct line of sight. The signal gets picked up whereever you point the remote.
The Terk worked okay but not great. About two weeks ago, it stopped working for no apparent reason. I took it back to the store where I bought it and they told me Terk discontinued the model. So I did a search on and found the Next generation remote extender, which costs about $60 less than the Terk. I was skeptical, even after reading all the rave reviews because I figured people from the company post these reviews. (I'm from New York and jaded, I guess.)
The remote arrived a couple of days after I ordere it. It took me about 10 minutes to hook up. You simply put the flying saucer-like receiver where you it's convenient. In my case, since the cable box is on and inside cabinet behind a door of the entertainment center cabinet, I placed the flying saucer o the back of a shelf about 78 inches off the floor--so you cannot see when standing up. I placed an emitter on the front of the cable box.
The emitter is a litle light bulb attache to a wire. The wire gets plugged into the back of the flying saucer reeciver. When you press the remote, the RF signal gets picked up by the flying saucer. The emitter then lights up in front. Since the emitter sticks on the front of the cable box--in the same spot where the signals gets picked up if you point the remote directly ast the cable box--the cable box changes channels and peforms all of the other remote functions.
This product works great. It has far better reception than the Terk. It is hidden on shelf out of the way. The channles change faster than ever. I spent the last 20 minutes writing this because the company deserves the recognition so it can sell a lot of these things.
Customer Review: Works Better than I dared hope
Summary: 5 Stars
I love having all my AV equipment out of sight in an AV cabinet- and this gizmo is what makes it possible. I ordered one on the strength of the glowing reviews, and was pleased to find that it works exactly as others have said. I can control the AV equipment from literally anywhere in my house.
Also, in my own use, I found a few unique things I hadn't seen mentioned in other reviews.
First off, in the tight space of my AV closet, the unit didn't send signals perfectly to all my equipment- probably because it needs to be located a little farther away from the devices than space inside the cabinet would allow.
I solved this by adding the "3Eye Triple IR Mouse Emitter" (which is 3 separate IR bulbs on a wire, you stick over the IR ports on your AV gear, then attach to the mini plug on the Remote Extender). Voila! With the direct connection to my devices, this thing never misses! If you have trouble, and can't locate the RCE far enough away from your gear, or there's interference in the IR signal, try the 3Eye device, it'll likely solve the problem. (Note: The RCE comes with a single IR cable, but it can only control one device).
Then I had another challenge arise- I have an audio receiver located almost 50 feet from the AV closet, in another cabinet. I wondered could I run an IR emitter cable that far, and have this control that device also? (And of course, without giving up control of the AV closet devices).
The answer: YES!
The Remote Control Extender only has one minijack, but a simple $2 dual-headphone adapter jack that you can get at any electronics store works to make it 2 jacks.
More of a challenge, I wondered would the IR emitter work via the dual adapter with the triple Eye, PLUS attached to 50 feet of headphone extension cable with mini-jacks.
The answer: YES!
So little signal strength goes through the cables, that you can extend modestly long distances, adapt with a splitter, and run as many IR bulbs as you need off the same mini jack, with no loss of IR performance.
So I merely ran the long cable through the wall to my stereo cabinet, plugged both IR emitter sends into Remote Extender (via the adapter), and now my universal remote controls literally EVERYTHING- even devices over 50 feet apart- with just this one extender!
This is a product that simply WORKS, and works well. An amazing product for the price. If you're looking for a way to hide all your AV gear and still be able to control it, and even if you need odd control options that require extended IR cables, this is the gizmo that will handle it!
Customer Review: Neat little device, works quite well with a bit of tweaking!
Summary: 4 Stars
Those of you with flat screen TV's and cable boxes are likely familiar with the IR (infrared) interference problems these TVs can cause. Many of today's flat screens put off so much IR noise that it renders the cable box difficult to control with an IR remote. Such is the problem I had with my 52" Bravia and cable box. I was hoping this R/C extender would solve the problem and give me better remote control over the cable box, and it delivered! It took some tinkering to get good results though, and that's the only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5.
First of all, the UFO-shaped receiver is susceptible to interference from other equipment regardless of which of the 3 channels it's set to. I originally placed it on top of the cable box and could not get it to work at all (it has indicator lights that show when it's receiving a signal from the remote, but when the unit is placed too close to certain equipment those lights never quit blinking indicating that it's getting flooded with noise interference). It had the same problem if it was placed too close to the TV. I finally moved it several feet away and got rid of that particular problem. The next problem was getting the IR repeater to work with the cable box. I tried placing the repeater directly over the "eye" on the cable box. It would only "see" about 1 out of every 10 remote button presses. I tried moving it around all over the lens, and finally removed the lens from the cable box and stuck the emitter right on top of the eye and surprisingly performance was even worse. After messing with it for an hour or so I finally determined that the best performance was generated by placing the lens back on the cable box, then placing two pieces of masking tape over the lens in the area of the eye (an old trick to help filter IR signals), then placing the emitter over that.
The above tweaking took me an hour or more of experimenting, but once that was done it has performed great! The instructions say to charge the batteries 24 to 36 hours. I found that after 24 hours charge it worked, but not very well (only about 80% of the button presses on the remote registered). I charged the battery another day and now it's working great. I've tried controlling from another room and even went outside and closed the door and tried from outdoors from about 30' away and it still worked great. I'm very impressed with the range! It's nice that it comes with a spare battery as well, there's no down time waiting for the battery to recharge.
So, if you get one of these and it doesn't work initially, try playing with the location of the receiver and/ or try the masking tape trick and see if it helps.
Customer Review: Works perfectly with Direct-TV model RC65 remotes!
Summary: 5 Stars
Considering how most peoples' homes are wired, an RF remote is absolutely essential to conveniently and cheaply watch a Direct-TV signal on more than one TV in a house. Since only Direct-TV's expensive HD satellite boxes have RF remote capability, the RF-based Next Generation Remote Control Extender is a Godsend for those of us with the lowly standard Direct-TV boxes! And the best part is that you can continue to use your existing remote.
If you haven't figured it out, what you're buying is a small, sub-AAA battery sized transmitter that fits, along with a rechargeable battery, inside an AAA battery sized unit. If your usual remote takes AAA batteries, just insert this unit in place of one of your batteries. If your remote takes AA size batteries, the AAA-size transmitter/battery unit is just slipped inside of an AA battery size sleeve (supplied) which is inserted in your remote in place of one of the AA batteries. The "saucer", which runs on a plug-in transformer (supplied), re-broadcasts an IR signal whenever it receives an RF signal from your existing remote, so it is simply aimed at the device you want to control (my satellite box is in a closet in the center of the house, where the satellite signal comes in, and where all of the TV lines spread from, so the saucer lives there). Also supplied is a wired IR blaster eye (5 feet long or so) that can be plugged into the saucer, and then stuck right on top of the satellite box IR remote sensor (if your satellite box is finicky and needs a super-strong signal to work). Also, in the saucer unit is an always-charging spare rechargeable battery to swap out when the one in your remote runs down. So, set-up and use is super easy.
Now, having read reviews indicating both that this will work and will not work with Direct-TV remotes, I was a little worried about ordering such an expensive item from a seller which was vague about whether they would accept a return if the item was not defective, but just incompatible. Well, I can verify that it DOES WORK nicely with my new (June 2010) Direct-TV remote model RC65 (I put the transmitter-battery unit in the lower position in the remote). In any case, the signal is evidently received from anywhere in the house, there is no noticeable time lag so button response is crisp, and the rechargeable battery has lasted for several weeks so far. In all, much, much better than messing with all of the wires and such necessary for an IR-blaster system! That said, it is a lot of money for a bit of cheap Chinese plastic and electronics. But, it does work great!!