While I love the design and quietness of the newer slim version of the Xbox360, the infrared receiver on it isn’t very good. You have to be pointing your remote control directly at the box to get it to register. Since we use the 360s around the house as our Media Center Extenders to watch TV, we spend a lot of time accessing them via remotes. We were having particular trouble in the living room so it was time for a little change.
I picked up an infrared extender for $17 on Amazon. It’s a very simple IR repeater. You plug the transmitter onto the receiver of the 360 and then put the new receiver somewhere that’s more visible. We stuck it onto the bottom corner of our TV. The whole thing is powered via USB which would be super convenient if our TV had USB power (it doesn’t.) The new extender works much better and it’s very rare to have trouble registering a command from the remote.