Anyone else have problems with LED lights interfering with IR remote controls?

So this took me FOREVER to figure out what my problem was, but basically I had switched all of the lights in my basement/man cave/surround sound room to LED lights a few months back. Ever since then I've been having troubles with being able to control my Denon Receiver. The Denon remote would work intermittently, my DirecTV remote that is programmed to change the Denon volume would only occasionally work, etc. Replaced all the batteries multiple times, even got a new DirecTV remote, same problem. sometimes they worked, sometimes not, but they would always work if I walked up to the receiver and put the remote 1 foot in front of it.

I finally figured out that it's my LED lights. If the lights in the ceiling are on, I can't get any remote to work unless the remote is closer to the receiver than the closest light. If all the lights are off, the remotes work from anywhere in the room, up to 20 feet away at the furthest wall.

So, anyone know a solution to this? Do I just have some cheap, bunkass LEDs that are causing some sort of weird interference and changing all my bulbs to a different brand might solve this?

Did some googling and I see a lot of articles about how not to use LED bulbs in your garage door openers because of the RF(radio) interference but I can't find too much about IR(light) interference.

Or is it possible that the LEDs are just brighter than my old lights and that is causing the problem? Maybe it's not the fact that it's LED and its purely a luminescence issue and any type of bulb that bright could be causing the problem?

If I have to go buy new lights I can't figure out if I'd be just fine with dimmer LEDs, or if I need to go back to traditional bulbs. And no other devices (TV, Satellite box, etc) are effected by the lights, only my Denon receiver

(and FYI, I've had the Denon receiver for 5 years, sitting in the same spot, so I know my old light bulbs never caused any issues)

Palum_sl said:

Are the LEDs emitting any IR light as a bleed through, perhaps because of poor quality doping or something? Do you happen to have a spectrometer at home because you're a homebrew engineer?

If they're name-brand bulbs you should be able to look up their output light. I know Osram Sylvania and Phillips had pretty detailed sheets for some of their models.

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Don't have any equipment to detect IR, and I'll have to research it but they were pretty much the cheapest LEDs available at Lowes...that could be part of my problem. Maybe they're cheap for a good reason.

Palum_sl said:

For what it's worth, if they were the ones that were dirt cheap every sale from Black Friday until now (Utilitech maybe? store brand anyway) I redid my entire house in them. Haven't had any problems myself, but in the room where I use remotes (TV) most often I have the really nice Sylvania dimmables, so there's that.

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That's it, Utilitech. I think that's like a Discount/Lowe's exclusive brand. Those are the ones I bought. Sounds like I need to pony up for some better bulbs.