Mr. Beetle,

If it's the remote that has a problem, why does
it work when pointed away from the device? I'd
suggest that perhaps there is too much
capacitance somewhere in the reciever circuit, or
something of the kind.

It might be that the buttons that do work have
sufficiently large gaps between pulses that the
capacitance is not a dominating factor. In the
signals sent by the buttons that DON'T work,
perhaps there are pulses temporally closer
together which, when subjected to the capacitance
of the reciever circuitry, start to bleed
together, and confuse the reciever. This would
be supported by the fact that it is the same keys
failing on both of your setups.

It's just an idea. Either way, a proper baffle
on the reciever should be quite able to mimic the
signal intensity of the factory remote, making
all functions work correctly.

Keep in mind that a substance's visible light
permiability does not necesarily reflect -- no
pun intended :) -- the IR permiability of said
substance.

-=Ingenious=-

"The difficult be do right away;
The impossible just takes a little longer."