Remote help?

You need remote extenders. I would ask your friend what he is using.

If you're just going through one wall, I would go with a wired IR extender.

This setup will have:
- an IR receiver eye that's mounted to the back of the TV (signals bounce off the wall and are picked up by the very sensitive eye)
- a confirmation LED that's mounted to the bottom of the TV. This flashes blue when the IR signal is received.
- Wire through the wall to the distribution box
- Blasters from the distribution box connected to each of the components
- All control done with a Logitech Harmony remote of your choice

I have the Hot-Link XL (IR over Cat5) and it works very well. You can do the pro though as its only a short run. The eye is very sensitive and there is no delay in transmitting the signal to the components.

The Harmony remote will allow you to set up activities macros for all of your viewing options and will automate the setup and customisations for each (e.g. press a button for watch TV and it will turn on the TV, AV receiver, go to the correct input etc). This makes the system much easier to use for the wife and kids and cuts down on remote clutter.

Yeah that will work fine. The extender simply passes the signal so you won't need to reconfigure anything.

I have the harmony 900 and believe you can get a better more flexible remote at its price point.....

I have the Logitech Harmony IR extender working with a Harmony 650 at my parents house and it seems to work pretty well so far.

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Harmo...4854043&sr=8-1

The distribution box has a bunch of wires coming out of it with a small IR blaster on the end thats sticky. You put the blaster right on the component IR receiver eye. 6 blasters are included and Hot-Link has a kit to hook up a second batch of 6 to the same distribution box. Its very easy to set up, especially if you're only going through 1 wall. At the TV side, I used a couple bits of black electrical tape to keep everything hidden nicely.

The only possible complicating factor is if you have a device where the IR eye is hard to find. It took a bit of trial and error to get it positioned on my Onkyo receiver. I just cut a hole in a piece of card and moved it around with the blaster against the hole with my wife in the other room using the remote. As soon as it worked for her I knew I had the correct position.

Also, if you have any problems, Hot-Link customer support is excellent. Just give them a call and they'll help you out.

The Logitech is pretty similar to what ljo000 posted. It comes with 2 mini blasters, and the base unit itself is a powerful IR blaster. I'm actually not even using the mini blasters. I just have the base unit on top of the LG home theater unit in the closet and it works fine. The IR signal from the base unit must be strong enough to bounce off the walls/door of the closet to get the signal to the LG.