Well, last week I received my new Logitech 880 universal remote. And by received, I mean I had to go to DHL's office to pick it up, since they apparently only come during the apartment leasing office's lunch break. The remote matches my DiNovo Media Desktop mouse and keyboard perfectly. I had previously gotten one of these for my dad for father's day, and setting it up was a breeze. However, my remote was to be used with my PC, not as a simple remote replacement. This meant that I had to get an IR receiver. I received that on the same day.
Needless to say, setting up the remote to control my computer was slightly more complicated than for simple electronics components. First, I had to set up the Logitech to emulate devices for each of the things I wanted to control on my computer. This meant a separate remote for Winamp, BeyondTV, and PowerDVD. And then I had to get it to emulate an amplifier to control the computer's volume. After all of this was finished, then I had to get the receiver to interpret the commands. This meant going through all of the buttons for each of the Logitech's different modes for the different programs. This was complicated further by the fact that you also have to pick appropriate anti-repeat timings for the IR signals, both in the remote setup, and in the IR receiver setup.
So, after I thought everything was configured, I fired it up. Of course, nothing this complicated ever works on the first try. Luckily the program I am using to interpret the signals has a nice logging feature. With that, I discovered that the remote I was emulating to control BeyondTV has not one, but two sets of IR codes that it alternates between. So, you guessed it, I got to go through all the buttons again and configure the program to use both sets of codes. Another problem I found was that I had forgotten that PowerDVD does not use the Windows volume control, because I have it set to forward the sound directly to the SPDIF output for processing by my Onkyo amplifier. So, I then had to add that device to my Logitech and tell the Logitech to use that for changing the volume while watching a DVD.
In short, the process was long and extremely painful, but in the end, well worth it. I love the remote; I can hardly wait to get a real HDTV to integrate with everything else. I do hope, however, that in the future the process can be streamlined a bit, either by Logitech or by the IR receiver hardware folks.