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TV Screens and IR Remote Interference

MRC01

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Joined
Feb 5, 2019
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This is tangentially audio related, since it's the IR remote volume control on my DAC/preamp. It sometimes works perfectly, other times intermittent and simply doesn't respond. With some troubleshooting I realized one correlating factor was it always worked perfectly when the TV was off (listening to music). When the TV was on, the remote was occasionally intermittent. This preamp has an IR sensor you can train to respond to any remote, so it may respond to a wider range of IR frequencies than a non-trainable one.

Reading more, it looks like some TVs emit a lot of IR light which can confuse remotes. Especially plasmas, but not limited only to plasmas. Mine is a 15-year old plasma that also is the commercial version, and if I recall that far back, I think one of the differences was the glass on the commercial version wasn't as well filtered. So the theory is, my plasma screen is spewing all this IR light pollution that I can't see but is confusing the preamp's IR sensor.

Since there are some EE savvy folks around here I thought I'd ask whether this well known and what tips I might follow to make the IR remote work better when the screen is on. Perhaps there is low-pass IR filter tape I can put over the remote sensor on the preamp?
 
My prior DAC didn't like the PC (flourescent tube) screen across the room.

A little piece of paper near the sensor provided enough of a shadow to permit the remote to work..
 
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