I have a HD DVR from Comcast, and if my TV is on and it is dark in the room, my remote will not work?? If I turn the lights on, or there is natural light in the room it works fine. It also works if my TV is off no matter what the lighting. I have a Sony Bravia LCD flat screen.

Yep. Known problem with LCD TV's. And not ust Comcast's cable boxes.

I think I have a solution, but it's not inexpensive. An IR repeater that's LCD proof. Order of magnatude - less than $100 anyway.

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Originally Posted by KeepItSimpleStupid

Yep. Known problem with LCD TV's. And not ust Comcast's cable boxes.

I think I have a solution, but it's not inexpensive. An IR repeater that's LCD proof. Order of magnatude - less than $100 anyway.

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Ha! I knew I wasn't crazy! Comcast looked at me like I had 3 heads. Thanks for your help. Any idea where to get one, and how to use it?

See page 6: http://www.xantech.com/XanCat_6_9_08.pdf

I've used their stuff in a commercial environment.

You would place a stick on emitter on the sensor(s) of the various devices and use the opaque cover. They are small. You'll end up buying the parts that would repeat the IR signal in the same room.

I can help more if you get stuck.

I was (am) having this same problem. I read in a different thread where if you have an automatic brightness control sensor on your TV that if you turn this off it will take care of the problem. I'm interested in trying it when I get home so I'll let you know if this turns out to be the issue. Seems like turning that off instead of buying an IR repeater. Hope it works... I know that my TV has this auto brightness control on it...

I am having the same problem with a DISH Network HD box. If this is a known problem, why is it only happening with the cable and satellite boxes? I have 4 other IR devices sitting with the satellite box and the only one that has a problem is the satellite box. Everything else will work without the lights on. As long as the lamp light shines on the right side of the box, it will work and this is day and night. The BluRay, Sound System box, CD changer, and TV remotes all work without light... the satellite box doesn't... why just satellite and cable boxes? Satellite techs want to just revert back to RF. Still wouldn't work with the Harmony remote for all the devices. Is there a solution for all these devices to work from 1 remote as a home theater system with the lights off. Don't want to turn off the auto brightness control as that was one of the reasons we purchased the TV in the first place to use as a home theater system because of that auto adjustment.

OK... I just came up with a solution for our system. We have a 52" LCD Sony Bravia on the wall and the satellite box sits on the cabinet under the TV. First I covered the IR sensor on the TV, that didn't work... next I tried covering both the TV and the satellite box IR sensors. Didn't work. Finally, I covered the IR sensor just on the satellite box. It worked. For the over aesthetics of the system, I didn't want a white piece of paper taped to the front of a black satellite box so I tried various black items including black electrical tape. I guess most of these are too thick because nothing seemed to work. Finally, I used a small piece of the narrow white correction tape used for editing documents, then used a black marker. It fits perfectly and you can't tell it's there. And, it works, even from across the room. Incidentally, I tried turning off the auto-light adjustment and that didn't work either. Should we add more equipment we might have to purchase an IR repeater but for now, this simple solution is working quite well.

I was having this same issue for a couple weeks and I literally tried everything I could possibly do. I took the batteries out of the remote and put them back in, put in fresh new batteries, unplugging the cable box and plugging it back in, tried another remote, reset remote to factory default, tried all codes for the cable box and finally went to Comcast and got a new remote. None of it worked, luckily the new remote was free.

It was annoying me so much I began to start playing with my TV settings and decided to change TV's pic mode(Sports, Standard, Movie, PC & Preference) from Movie to Standard and my remote instantly worked. I can't believe it took me two weeks to figure that out. Possibly because I changed it to Movie a few months ago and it took all that time to prevent the remote from working.

So, if your TV has the settings, change the Pic Mode to any other than the current one you are on and the remote should work again.