I didn't know if this was the right place to post this but I have an application called Intelliremote that used to be used to customize the remote functionality of Creative Soundblaster remote controls.  

Now Intelliremote supports all flavors of Microsoft MCE Remotes.  You can completely customize your remote to have any action performed when you press a remote button.  Do you want the  Green Button to launch Winamp instead of Media Center?  Now you can!   Each remote button can be a assigned to send a keystroke, a mouse event, an application event or script.  And multiple profiles can be created so you can have your remote keys mapped for Winamp one way, and completely different set of mappings for Itunes. 

If interested definitely give it a try....

http://www.intelliremote.com

FYI anyone, it's $15.

Ooops.  I forgot to mention that.  I charge the fee just because i spend so much time answering questions and supporting the app.  Plus internet hosting and forums.   Plus it drives me to keep innovating new features and giving users what they want out of their remote.

It looks very nice actually. I wish more folks out there would help build plugins this cool!

The webpage seems a bit unclear.
Do you still need a Soundblaster to get this to work, or does it not rely on any soundcard anymore ?
I have done something similar with Autohotkey and Micha's plugin, but it is nice to see this in a standalone program.

I don't see a mention of MCE2005. Should I just use the IntelliRemote profile instead of the MCVista profile?

boulder2:

The webpage seems a bit unclear.
Do you still need a Soundblaster to get this to work, or does it not rely on any soundcard anymore ?
I have done something similar with Autohotkey and Micha's plugin, but it is nice to see this in a standalone program.

No you don't need any Soundblaster hardware.  This program works for both Soundblaster remotes and the MCE Remote.  For the MCE Remote you need nothing but the eHome Infrared Driver installed and the remote.  That is it.

MitchSchaft:

I don't see a mention of MCE2005. Should I just use the IntelliRemote profile instead of the MCVista profile?

Yes just use the default profile or create your own custom one mapped the way you like it.  The Intelliremtoe profile is just a bunch of defaults.   The Media Center one is a profile sent in by a user for using Media Center with his Soundblaster remote.   But each profile is 100% customizable.

Nice, I can change the icon and add anything I want!

MitchSchaft:

Nice, I can change the icon and add anything I want!

Yes!  Intelliremote lets you take absolute control over your remote.  And even change remote buttons based on the application that has focus.  So if Winamp has focus an entirely different remote button map takes over based on your Winamp profile.  You can create profiles for ANY app, but there are a bunch included in the /profiles directory that my users have created.

You can even change the remote button names if you don't like my name for say "MCE Star" or "Start" which is the Green Button.

Very cool. Now I have to track down some cool icon files.

Any chance of adding IR blaster control suppport?

MitchSchaft:

Very cool. Now I have to track down some cool icon files.

Any chance of adding IR blaster control suppport?

1. If you click the Change Icon button it will actually allow you to open any EXE or DLL and get its icons out.  For example, if you navigate to C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe it will let you extract the notepad icon. 

2. I am not quite sure what IR blaster is?  Do you mind explaining it?

Thanks for that tip!

An IR blaster is an extension of the MCE remote's receiver. It has 2 of them. It allows the PC to send an IR signal to an external device via a blaster cable. Here's a couple of pictures/links:
Picture and Link and Link
                                 

I bet you could check this thread out and make something of it. I think if you made that work(if I do understand the program correctly), then you would basically negate any other program that attempts to make the MCE remote universal. And without the hassle.

I actually don't think this would effect Intelliremote at all.  Since Intelliremote uses the default eHome Microsoft Driver and IR Blaster basically just boosts and replicates the signal?   So Intelliremote would still be listening for the correct signal from the driver.  

Oh wait, This actually receives a command from an MCE Remote and then sends that signal to a third party piece of hardware like an AV Receiver.   Does this have to learn the codes of your AV Receiver and know what to do when you press an MCE Remote button?

I thinking of giving this a try since for some odd reason my Green Button stopped working to launch the Media Center application. It sounds like this will definitely allow you to change buttons once an application has focus, but how do you handle swithing the focus from one app to another? Or as in my particular case, getting the Media Center program to launch when pressing the Green Button? Is this supported? If so, this and the ability to control iTunes with my remote you will have earned my $15 for sure.

as far as the blaster, yes you are correct in that it "reinterprets" the signal from the remote. I am not sure how the codes are set up, since you don't actually have to choose a model or anything, but I assume it is doing some such manipulation. There's a setup routine you folow in Media Cneter when setting them up and it somehow figures out what codes need to be sent via the blaster.

So what the person was suggesting would be quite useful and I have seen some other people discussing it before. Essentially, you would present a way to map the remote buttons via software, but instead of just controlling internal app functions, you would have a way to set the "state" of the remote to say "Set Top Box" or "Audio Reciever" or "Tivo". This would both set up the the infrared receiver to "reinterpret" the signal and direct it to the (appropriate) IR blaster.

I am not sure if you would need to have a sepearet blaster per device, or if you could broadcast one set of instructions out to many IR transmitt and the device would know based on the codes received that the signal was meant for it. So in other words, would Tivo interpret a code of say "X10" to mean stop recording, while the set top box would interpret it to be change channel. If this is the case, you would likely need some type of switch for the IR transmittrs so that the right code got sent to the right channel based on the "state" of the remote.

This is all very doable and is probably quite similar to how the logitech universal remotes work, but instead of building some type of flash memory USB download, you would keep all of this onboard the computer.

Franly, I am surprised no one has come out with a product like this yet. There is deifnitely a hurdle to gathering all the codes, but I would think once you know them, you assemble a USB IR emitter (blaster) which could have 4, or 8 or 12 or however many channels you wanted to enable pretty cheaply. I would think much cheaper than even the cheapest logitech remote goes for.

And... if you need to gather codes, perhaps you could offer a rebate for anyone who has a remote that is not yet in your database. They could send it in, you learn the new codes, add them to the db publish the db and send the remote back to the customer.

So now that I have defined your business plan and you know how to work with remote codes, all you need is an investor and a simple device fabricator. So what do you think, I can i buy one next week?