Review on Aketek Infrared Extender Receiver Repeater by Linda Smith

This item is perfect; We recently upgraded our entertainment center and found that our receiver is too big for the side shelves with glass doors, it should sit on the middle shelves without glass doors. So to control the receiver we need to keep the door open. It looked like the perfect solution, so I ordered it. item arrived quickly and has instructions; However, they were not printed in English. The attached pictures show enough information to be able to connect it properly. When researching this topic, I could not find any information on the length of the cables, so here is a schematic of my device. (USB 5V port)------ About 6ft cable----(IR Receiver)----about 9ft cable-----(IR Emitter) The IR- Emitter is quite small and can be mounted (via self-adhesive) directly on the front of the device just in front of the component IR. I wasn't sure exactly where mine was, so I used the remote for the receiver, held it right up to my face and moved it around to see where it worked best; I found it's on the right side of the display. And with an IR emitter attached there, the remote control still works well even though the IR emitter blocks a small portion of the display. The IR receiver also has self-adhesive tape to hold it in place and has a small LED, this LED is green when on and flashes red when IR signals are being received. I first plugged the 5V USB jack into an empty USB port on the TV but with this setup the extension only works when the TV is on, as we also use the receiver for music I opted for the 120 V wall adapter supplied CONCLUSION: This item worked perfectly for me, the receiver and transmitter are quite small and hardly noticeable; The self-adhesive foil also keeps these small parts in place. There was also more than enough cord length to reach the components themselves and the 120V surge jack. I am only a few meters away from the IR extender receiver. When I'm sitting on the couch and pressing a button on the remote, the IR receiver's LED flashes red (meaning it's received a signal), but the real home theater receiver it's broadcasting to doesn't do anything when I bring the remote control near the remote control. The IR extender receiver will eventually start working once I'm a few feet away. I'm a little disappointed, this was the perfect solution when it worked. I tried different power supplies to see if that was the problem but it was still the same. I hope I'm just having a bad block and trying another. I will update the review when my next block works correctly. UPDATE - 6/12/2013: I have replaced this item with a Nextronics model :( The Nextronics B00C5PNW5S had a slightly longer cable length to the IR emitter. Otherwise it appeared to be the same size as this unit. It has been running for over a month The only thing to note is that the Nextronics device doesn't come with an AC/USB adapter, however I am using the original AC/USB adapter that came with the original device.