9910 spontaneous code change

[CollieJim]

My new URC9910 was working fine yesterday, but today it had a problem. Since new I have only done the following:
GE TV - 0747
Pioneer cable box - 0877
Go Video DVD-VCR combo - 0278
Cat L1 - page down for guide
Cat L2 - page up for guide
Cat L4 - 'C' button to exit guide info page

Yesterday I could select a channel in the guide and press 'select' to view the channel. Today pressing 'select' returned the guide to the currently viewed channel and would not leave the guide.

I was able to recover by restoring the factory default settings and configuring again as above. Changing CBL to something else and then back to 0877 had no effect.

The display has good contrast and the batteries are fresh alkaline.

Do I have cause to worry? A defective memory cell or something?

TIA
Jim

[The Robman]

It's not clear from your post whether this is an issue with your URC-9910 or with your cable box. Does the cable box still respond normally to the cable box remote?

[CollieJim]

Sorry. My diagnostic steps were:

1. Change the CBL code to 0533 (another Pioneer code).
2. Try it - didn't work, of course.
3. Change back to 0877. Select still misbehaves. Other keys work.
4. Unplug cable box for 30 seconds to reset it.
5. Try the 9910 Select - still bad.
6. Try the Cox remote for the cable box. Its Select works properly.
7. Try the 9910 Select - still bad.
8. Reset 9910 to factory defaults, set TV and CBL, and learn L1, L2, and L3.
9. Try the 9910 Select - works properly now.

This points to a problem with the 9910.

The other buttons on the 9910 I tried worked as expected. Only the 'select' button misbehaved.

Jim

[The Robman]

Have you tried learning the SELECT button from the cable remote to see if that fixes it?

[CollieJim]

I did try the cable box remote and it worked (step 6 above) so I'm not sure what learning the key would accomplish. It's too late now to try it. I will keep it in mind if the problem repeats.

[The Robman]

Yeah, but in step 7 you say that the URC-9910's SELECT button is still bad, so assuming that it has the wrong code (ie, EFC) assigned to it, learning the button from the cable remote would correct this.

[CollieJim]

It seems I'm a bit slow...

I got the impression from the manual that came with the remote that only the L1-L4 keys could learn.

I tried learning the Select key and it worked.

Thanks for the push.

Jim

[The Robman]

That's a common misconception that we do our best to dispell.

[CollieJim]

I think I know what happened now. I probably pressed the Select key once too many times when trying to set up L4 and ended up programming it instead of L4.

[The Robman]

If it was a bad learn that caused the problem in the first place, rather than using learning to fix it, you should delete the learned signal from the SELECT button.

Also, just FYI, if you were using JP1 to program the remote, you would have spotted the learn on the SELECT button right away.