Not fussy about all the sticky IR gizmos being glued on the front of all my equipment, but it looks like the 850/MRF250 would be a for sure. May pickup the 850 solo and try it out. It seems like the MRP250 goes for about $12 more if I buy it later..

trikos, you've come this far, go with the 850 and RF250. BTW, I just took another stroll through your HT...really impressive! You did a great job.

Thanks rance, I think I will go for broke..

I will do a final post of the finished product once I am done and maybe couple that with a review..

Pulled the trigger and purchased the MX-850 and MRF-250 receiver.. I will do a mini review on this one with the 990.

Is the MX-700 file compatible with the MX-850 Gonk?

Yep, I believe that both use the same software program (700 and 800 do, and the 850 is just a tweaked 800).

Tweaked? I don't know about tweaked..

But here is a recent quote of the differences that I know about, there many be others:

The 850 is the same as the 800 (which is an RF version of the 700). The differences (other than button style and color) are that the 850 has a separate center select button in the thumbpad and better backlighting of the LCD screen (the text stays dark while the background is lit). The 850 also has the ability to learn some hard-to-learn toggle bit commands. All other programming abilities are identical to the MX-800.

- yeah, maybe "tinkered-with" would be a better way of putting it...

I have a strange thing happening with my MX-500 that I've not had in the past. I've always just taught the commands that I want to the MX-500 and have never really had a problem. The MX-500 is my alltime favorite remote. But with my 990 I don't seem to be able to get the volume to increase more than one notch at a time by holding down the +VOL buttom. I have to tap it repeatedly to get it to increase. The -VOL works as expected, tap and it goes down one, hold and it reduces as long as you hold it. The +VOL just doesn't work right. I can get it to either go up a single notch, or to jump up multiple notches, if I hold down the teaching remote for more than a quick tap when teaching the MX-500. I even went back to my trying my 950 remote to teach it, as I never had this issue with the 950 and MX-500. It still won't work. Both the 990 and 950 remotes control the volume correctly on the 990, I just cannot get the MX-500 to do it. Anyone else have this problem, and if so, did you find a work around? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Jeff

That is the result of the way you learned the volume command - I've run into it too. When you teach the up and down commands, hold down the buttons on the 990's remote until the MX-500 says "GOOD". That will allow you to hold the button down on the MX-500 and send the signal continuously.

Just for reference for us MX newbies, was the remote just "tapped" to get the other result during programming?