Once again, the Outlaws came through. Steve, in technical support, discovered the solution to the problem and contacted ME. This kind of customer focus is indeed quite rare in the AV field, and speaks volumes about the consumer oriented philosophy of Outlaw.

According to Steve, the problem turned out NOT to be a defect in the 990, but rather, to be an operational quirk.

In the system configuration, if the OSD is setup to be ON, until it is turned off all other ir operation is "frozen" (except for up, down, left, right, set, and volume).

The simple solution is to set the OSD for a timeout, anything from 15 to 50 seconds (rather than ON). In this case, the menu will automatically close when the set time expires, rather than remaining on indefinitely. As soon as the menu closes, all IR commands once again become fully funcional again.

In a word, avoid setting the OSD to ON, and choose a timeout.

Hope this helps!

CI