I'd always have trouble getting this to work reliably. It seemed as though during the day it was a lot worse. I'd have to hit each key a couple of times before it would work. The rf had to go through the walls and I just couldn't find a good place to locate the receiver. Some spots in my viewing room would simply not work, so I would look to rest the remote on a table where it was working well. That kinda defeats the purpose of a hand held remote, however.
I actually bought 3 of these units so I would have spares and I program them with extenders. I leave the remotes at a couple of places so there's always one handy to skip over an annoying commercial. I use only one rf receiver.
Anyway, here's the tip
Each comes with a 3-4 foot plug in ir cable so you can place the ir next to some unit in case the receiver isn't doing a good job where it's at.
I found that I could splice 50 feet of cheap radio shack speaker wire into this cable and so I could have the receiver in my viewing room and set up the little ir transmitter next to the equipment in my equipment room. I don't remember the guage, but it's not the heavy kind, it's the see through stuff for $5 per 50 feet.
I cut the wire in the middle and spliced in the 50 feet of wire. I then run this from the receiver unit, which I can place almost anywhere in my viewing area, since there's no longer any walls or obstructions between my remotes and the receiver, so it works great.
I placed the other end of the wired extender about 3 feet from my equipment in the other room and now it works perfectly.
Hope this is useful to someone. It's my attempt at a thanks for this forum.