Remote control from the next room

I've been thinking of moving my equipment rack into the next room. (It would allow for better speaker placement.) The rack would be moving, like, five feet from where it currently sits, just around the corner through an open doorway, but would be completely out of sight from the listening position. I'd thought that an infra red repeater -- with a unit in here to point the remote at and something in the next room that would relay that signal to the components -- would be the ticket, but when I stopped by my local Best Buy today to try to get one, you'd have thought I was speaking Albanian. Or that I'd asked if they had anchovie-flavored telephones. An IR repeater is what I'm after, right? If so, can someone recommend a brand and a source? (Because of the setup, I could run a wire from the unit in this room to the one in the room with the equipment, if that matters.)

Thanks for any help you might be able to give me on this one.

Howard