[mythtv-users] Remotes, IR Receivers and MCE remotes

[Tom Lichti]

On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 10:33 AM, Chuck Peters <cp at ccil.org> wrote:
>
> It seems that buying just an IR receiver is costlier than buying a remote
> with a IR receiver.  That doesn't make a lot of sense.  With all the old
> remotes around it would be nice to buy a receiver and program whatever
> remote...  Is it possible to find a good inexpensive USB IR receiver?
>
> The mythtv wiki has a couple of pages on MCE remotes and it looks like one
> needs to be careful about which one to get.
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/MCE_Remote
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Generic_HID_"MCE"_Remotes
>
>
> These two appear fairly similar and work from what I can tell.  A similar
> Pinnacle model for $29.99 did not seem to work well for one mythbuntu user.
> What is most preferred by people?
>
> Microsoft A9O-00007 WinXP Media Center Infrared Remote Control  $38.99
>
> Anyware HA-IR01SV Infrared Certified MCE VISTA Remote Control   $21.99

I have gone through hell and back to get a solid, working remote. For
a long time I had excellent results with a Home-Electronics serial IR
receiver, and any remote I cared to use. Then I upgraded my frontend
and it didn't have a serial port, so I got an IguanaIR USB
receiver/transmitter, but I never ever got that working very well. It
was either too sensitive, or not sensitive enough, and really killed
the WAF. Then I bought this:

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=018276&cid=ET.674

which comes with a USB IR receiver, and it worked out of the box with
Ubuntu 8+ and FC8. The IR receiver shows up as:

Philips eHome USB IR Transceiver and Microsoft MCE 2005 Remote Control

and in LIRC I just used the OOB MCE config file, and it worked perfectly.

Tom