For anyone serious about home theater design who doesn’t want a stack of different AV gear sitting below their TV screen, this problem is as old as the infrared remote control itself.  How do you get the beam of light from your remote into the closet or other room in which you’ve stowed all of your AV gear?  The answer is via an RF (radio frequency) remote control extender.

RF extenders have been around for many years.  They typically take the form of some type of IR receiver that you place near your TV screen to “catch” the IR signal from your remote control, which is converted by the receiver into an electrical signal and re-transmitted via RF to a RF receiver in another room that contains the devices you’re trying to control.  This RF receiver then converts the RF signal it received back into an IR light beam and “shoots” it to the IR receivers on the devices to be controlled.  While more complex IR distribution systems can transmit the RF signal over existing coaxial cable, in my experience these are typically more expensive and difficult to set up than their wireless counterparts.  It wasn’t until I discovered an ingenious product from Next Generation Home Products that I truly solved my IR distribution needs.

The brilliance of this device becomes apparent in its method of decoding the IR signal from the remote control and converting it into a transmittable RF signal.  Rather than receive the remote’s IR signal via an IR receiver, the device somehow senses the modulation of the IR signal via the current draw from the remote’s batteries.  An inconspicuous sleeve that when installed in the remote isn’t visible to the remote’s user slides over a supplied 2/3AAA rechargeable battery and then becomes one of the remote’s batteries.  The sleeve also houses an incredibly small RF transmitter.  The device transmits the RF signal to an RF receiver that, in much the same way as other IR repeating devices, converts it back into IR light which is then “shot” at the devices needing control.

Installation of the system requires almost no mental acuity.  You plug in the RF receiver to AC power near the devices you want to control, extend its antenna, and place the transmitter over the 2/3AAA rechargeable battery provided in the kit (the RF receiver has a battery charging slot for this battery).  After installing the transmitter on the 2/3AAA battery, the assembly takes the form of a standard AAA battery that can then be installed directly into your remote control.  If you’re remote requires AA batteries, an adapter is provided for that as well.  Then take the remote to another room in your house and start controlling things.

I use the LRRX remote extender to control a DVR that broadcasts to all my home’s TV’s.  It’s fun to watch guests point the remote at the TV in my living room, not realizing that it doesn’t matter where they point the remote since the IR signal it emits is useless.  I also enjoy watching TV in bed on cold nights since I can keep the remote under the covers with me and still maintain control.

While, expectantly, the reliability of the transmitted RF signal decreases as distance to the receiver increases, I did also find a correlation between the quality of control and which battery slot the transmitter was placed into in remotes that require more than one battery.  But compared to the other IR distribution solutions I’ve tried, nothing compared to the ease and invisibility of this system.  I highly recommend it.