Tonight's question night for me!

I finally got my irblaster from irblaster.info working on my MBE so that I can hack at getting it to control my antenna rotor for my ATSC tuner card...

I also have in the conf file the controls for one of my ATSC STB's, and I've got the irsend working with both units.

I've noticed that the range for the serial blaster is only about TWO to THREE inches. If I don't have the transmitter directly in front of the respective ir receiver...the commands go unrecognized.

Is there any way to boost up the transmit power, or should I be looking for some other irblaster?

Which irblaster do you have? If you want range, and its the serial port blaster, I'd recommend these guys:
http://iguanaworks.net/

They're using a .3 FARAD super cap that charges up over time, so there's plenty of power for blasting available as long as you're not blasting continuously, and the whole thing is powered by the serial port.

If you wanted to build your own instead, you can use their schematic to do so.

Note that some receivers are sensitive about getting hit with TOO much power so sometimes you can't blast from less than 1 foot away without maybe an optical filter over the offending receiver.