I doubt it's a physical issue. I deal with computers and their peripherals every day. Keyboards which have very similar electronics don't exhibit such randon behavior. If a key goes bad on a keyboard it stays bad. At best, you might be able to get a bad key to work once in a great while if you push it very hard. But a normal press will fail 99.9% of the time if the key is bad. Sometimes they get stuck in the contact position and you have to pry the key up in order to get it to stop sending a signal.

Another example is my telephone keypad. The number "2" key works but I have to press it very hard every time in order to get it to register. The MX-900 won't work when it fails no matter how hard you press it. But release it and press it again and it will work 100% of the time.

In very simplistic terms the keys have a rubber type membrane material with a small metal contact which when pressed makes contact with a metal contact area on a circuit board. The button making contact with the circuit board completes the circuit and sends the appropriate signal.

If it were a physical issue I would suspect that the button presses would fail all most all the time instead of ocassionally. Anything's possible but I don't think it's a physical issue.

In addition, I would think that the beta testers would be using remotes that exhibited the problem before they installed the new beta software to make sure that the problem was resolved on the end users exhisting remotes.

I would certainly hope the engineers are doing tests on remotes that had the problem before as well as brand new out of the box remotes.

Let's certainly hope it's not a physical problem. What a nightmare that would be for us and URC. Having to RMA all these defective remotes would really suck! :(