This was the only issue I've had thus far with the 976. Glad to hear I wasn't the only one with the issue. Aside from the need to either be pointed directly at the unit or extremely close to the unit for IR to function,. I had the weird and almost disaterous occurrences of almost blowing my rc64ii since down decided it wanted to turn up and not stop until the dreaded 0.0db.

Needless to say I sent and email and it wasn't replied to. My emails are generally replied to.

My solution was to by Logitech ultimate Harmony one remote since best buy had it on sale for 70% off. Every qualm I had has been resolved. I can be anywhere in the room not even pointed at the unit and it works flawlessly.

So definitely a manufacturing defect. Glad it was not a defective unit, cause I can't live without it.