'RE1000' range extender - duplicate SSID behavior? Any feedback would be appreciated!

Question

I am using a Cisco 802.11n wireless E4200 router (almost exclusively on 2.4 GHz).
I just bought a Cisco 802.11n (supports only 2.4 GHz) RE1000 wireless range extender last night (so the below is based on limited testing and usage so far).
1. The good news is that the signal strength on the other side of the house same floor and on the other side of the house one floor down, when using the RE1000 range extender, are now great (4 - 5 bars of signal strength in the Windows 7 wireless network GUI) throughout the house even wit the router in one corner room.
(Quite frankly given my house size and smallnetbuilder's test results I am surprised the signal strength was not higher to begin with since I am using a Rosewill RNX-N2X wireless USB adapter with two external antennae that outperforms all my other USB wireless N adapters by a long shot).
2. The bad news (aside from needing to try several times initially just to get Cisco Connect * to find the extender,
is that I now see TWO (duplicate in terms of name only) SSID's in my Rosewill wireless utility (that I was only using temporarily to check signal strength in dbM). Windows only shows one available network entry with that specific SSID!
Luckily I had the Rosewill utility running, since the SSID (let's refer to it as 'HomeSSID1') was showing a weak signal under the instance of it that I was connected to. If I had not  seen the duplicate instance which was pointing to the extender instance of my wireless network (also listed as HomeSSID1 with the same password) which had a MUCH higher signal strength in a remote room, I would have returned it.
Now here is why this may be 'bad', at least until I get some answers on the following:
3. For devices (e.g... Blu-Ray players with built-in Wifi (802.11n) adapters where I don't have the luxury of running the Rosewill client utility (which allows me to switch to the stronger of the two 'duplicate' SSID's), I may only see ONE instance of the SSID (like ion Windows) to connect to.
This may therefore not allow me to switch to the higher signal version / instance of the SSID (depending on which one it picks, which leads me to my 2nd question below).
4. For various wifi-equipped various devices (Blu-Ray players and laptops) in my house, which version of the SSID will they connect to (if they see only one)??? Will they be 'smart' enough to select the instance of my SSID with the higher signal strength.
If some of these devices do see both instances of my SSID (the router one and the extender one), and I select the higher signal strength one, which one will it pick next time I turn that device back on and it reconnects to one of my two matching (dupe name) wireless network SSID's upon startup...
5. The other strange thing is that I get prompted for the WPA2 AES passphrase in Windows EACH time when I reconnect after having switched between the two duplicate-but-separately listed SSID's (with differing signal strengths), even though I have it configured that way.
While windows does not show both SSID's in the list of 'available network' when clicking on the taskbar icon, it does appear to have both in control panel under wireless network connections (although one of those could be an old entry or even an old 5 GHz entry before I renamed my 5 GHz SSID differently to avoid confusion).
* (Cisco Connect software is the only way to configure the RE1000 initially at least - i.e.. until you find the assigned IP address for the extender, after which you will be able to use the web browser interface for configuration).
Any answers and insights would be appreciated!
PS: I placed the extender not too far the center of the second floor, as opposed to placing it on the opposite side of the house from the router. This was to ensure the signal being repeated had a strong enough source to begin with and also to spread the coverage nicely to the rooms where it was weak when I only had the E4200 broadcasting.

Answer 1

I can only remove them in Windows. That won't help though since my Blu-Ray player is seeing two directly from the router (since Windows has no bearing on what the Blu-Ray player can see). I checked windows wireless networks that I have configured (i.e. not the 'available networks' screen but, under 'amanage wireless network' in the network and sharng center, which shows the networks actually configured on my laptop) and I only see two in all (one is the 2.4 GHz one and one the old 5 Ghz one before I renamed it). I will definitely update this once I play around with things a bit. - need to hook up b2 other blu-ray players (same model but not unpacked yet) in two remote spots where I know the RE1000 hazs the better signal) and see what happens. I hope I can either1) (since the Blu-Ray players don't move) get the players configured to ONLY (always) connect to either the router or the extender depending on their location (ad never switch between the two).or2) IF, by (wifi standards) design, the Blu-Ray players will automatically connect to a given version of the SSID and not the one I selected when I first selected a network on the player's list: Then I hope it will be  based on the strongest signal and hopefully not random or tbe first instance of the duplicate SSID that it "sees") so that at least they automatically connect to whichever has the best signal strength and not switch back and forth between the router and extender versions of the SSID. For the laptop, I will just switch between the extedner SSID and the router SSID depending where I am (and hope that it stays connected to that same one the whole time until I manually disconnect and connect to the other version of the SSID). I would think someone knows how this is supposed to work.Given that the player only asks for the SSID (and not the MAC address) when the user is prompted to set up the wifi connection, there are three possible ways this works:1) it always connects to the same instance I first defined (this would imply the player somehow uses the MAC address or other identifying feature that allows it to distinguish between the 'duplicate'; SSID's).  2) it connects to the stronger of the tow signals each time it starts up 3) it connects to the first of thw tow SSID instances that  it "sees".Does anyone know if it is 1,2 or 3 (or does it depend on the wireless client, meaning a Blu-Ray player may use one option (of the above 3) and a Windows PC uses a different method to select to which instance of the SSID it will connect at any given time.I would love to hear what other extender users have experienced in regard to the above (in bold).