Good, Cheap MCE Remote for use Logitech Harmony Emulation

[weisguy]

About ready to move to NPVR and it looks like it's time for me to move from the built-in Hauppauge remote on my tuner to the MCE remote schema. I have a logitech harmony and therefore can use it for anything in logitech's library or that is learnable. I would like to buy a cheap MCE remote basically for the receiver and emulate the associated remote using the Logitech Harmony.

I thought at first that any old one would do, but it looks like it's hit or miss. The second review of this remote on amazon for example scares me - sounds like the guy had a ton of trouble doing this and it looks like such ease is not guaranteed.

Anyone doing this and had luck with anything in particular they could recommend? I am in the USA and will run Windows 7 when I upgrade to NPVR.

If this thread is a dupe I apologize - It seems like someone here should have asked this by now, but I couldn't find any recommendations after scouring through the forums.

[mikeh49]

I have one of these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-MCE-Remote...336094b476

Best price and free shipping.

Also available from this guy:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-MCE-Remote...335e5896b9

Works fine in Win7 (at least for me) in spite of what the seller says. I wanted one with the colored buttons and the "real" MCE receiver. You definitely need the receiver, there are some with a much smaller receiver that just emulate a mouse and keyboard, not a real remote.

After using both the Hauppauge remote and the MCE, I don't find much advantage to the MCE. BTW, I have used both with the Harmony. In fact, the Haup may be a little better as it's dedicated buttons are more handy (to me) than the MCE or the Harmony. Also, the Haup is easier (in my opinion) to set up for other applications in case you want to do something besides NPVR by remote (Netflix Viewer, for example). With additional software, the MCE remote can be programmed to operate other apps, but I find the Haup approach easier to use. I tried several of the MCE tools and couldn't get my brain around any of them. Others on the forum use and love them, though.

[weisguy]

Thanks for the advice - are you running GBPVR or NPVR though? It seems like MCE is the expected method of controlling NPVR, so I'm trying to get with the times.

[mikeh49]

My main system with the MCE remote is GBPVR and my observations above apply to that. NPVR works fine with the Haup remote, however, at least in my testing. You do have to edit the irremote.ini file yourself to add the NPVR support, as I don't believe Sub provides the "fix" as he did for GBPVR. There is a thread on this in the NPVR support forum.

[Jaggy]

This page on the wiki fairly well covers what is needed to get the Hauppauge remote working with NextPVR.

http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...ttonRemote

[Sykor]

There's an excelent tutorial regarding the use of a MCE remote without any intermediate software (like IR server suite): MCE-Remote-WITHOUT-ANY-SOFTWARE!.

Take sometime to read and understand the way it works, especially the "USB HID to PS/2 Scan Code Translation Table". The logitech harmony database has some IR codes from the MCE _keyboard_, allowing you to expand on the number of usable commands. It's just a matter of adding them to the registry.

The Haup's irremote.ini allows you a level of app customization that the MCE's fixed-code-to-keystroke translation can not. But given most apps acceptance of the MCE's most basic functions/commands, and the extended code pool in the harmony database, maybe you can reach a good compromise.

I've had multiple issues with the irremote solution over the years, as it has the tendency to every now and then lose connection to the IR receiver in my PVR USB2. So the MCE solution was a blessing. Plus, I can finally wake the mediacenter with the remote

[mikeh49]

Good point on waking the machine; I had forgotten that, and it is, indeed, a nice feature.