Direct IR input

archive_user · August 17, 2012, 2:33pm

A couple of the devices in my home theater installation have back panel “IR” input ports for 3.5mm plugs (e.g., the NAD T757 receiver, and the Oppo BDP 95 blu-ray player). The receiver also has an IR-out port, which the NAD manual says can be used as an IR repeater.

Is the iTach IP2IR unit compatible with these devices? That is, can I use a standard 3.5mm cable between the ITach unit and the devices? If so, does each device need to be connected directly to the iTach unit, or can I run a cable from the iTach to the receiver, and from the IR-out port of the receiver to the IR input port of the Oppo?

On a related note, being able to use the legacy remotes may be useful when we have guests who don’t have iPhones or iPads. If I use this sort of direct connection set up, will I be able to use the legacy IR remote control units supplied by the respective device manufacturers along with the Roomie Remote/iTach system? I note that the Oppo manual says that the IR receiver on the front panel of the Oppo blu-ray unit is disabled when the the IR port on the back is plugged in. It is not clear to me whether the NAD receiver disables IR front panel input when the back panel ports are plugged in (if not, using the NAD as a repeater seems like a good idea).

I have not seen anything on the Roomie Remote website indicating whether you can still use the legacy remote controls if you have attached the IR emitters to the IR inputs on the front of the devices. If so, that would solve the problem. My concern is that if you stick an emitter on the IR receiver, the IR receiver won’t be able to see IR signals coming from any other source. So, the question is, can you still use the legacy remotes if you use the emitter cables supplied with the iTach unit?

sc_admin · August 17, 2012, 6:55pm

In general, those are just Mono IR jacks. You would use a cable like the one shown here for that:

astore.amazon.com/cyphersoft-20? … TF8&node=9

Note that there are indeed different incarnations of those jacks though. For instance, Xantech products look like the exact same jack but are totally different and have the potential to cause hardware damage without a proper cable like this one:

store.roomieremote.com/gc-cgx/

Whether your legacy remotes continue to work is a function of the target device and your setup. We would add that there is pretty much always a way to get that working though. You could for instance add a Xantech IR receiver into a Xantech block and then feed that into the IR input.

To ensure that the IR receiver window is not blocked, note that you can also apply the emitter to the cabinet a couple inches away from the IR receiver window without issues in most cases.