IR Blaster for 2 Hauppauge HD PVR / Colossus units

[jghanisco]

I am running Windows 8 on my NPVR server, and have an HD PVR and a Colossus connected to my computer, which are fed by 2 HD boxes. As hauppauge only allows one device to utilize it's IR Blaster, I've decided to use the Colossus blaster, and tried to find other options for the second unit. I have an MCE remote & IR receiver / blaster, but it does not work on Windows 8. I've read about other people having the same issue as myself, and there has never been a fix that I can find. I've since decided to use the HD PVR as a fixed unit. It has one channel feeding it, and I manually update this one channel and replace the previous channel in the device settings field, but this is a pain. Especially when I forget to change the channel on the HD Receiver. My HD Boxes do not have firewire, so I don't have that ability.

So the questions. Does anybody out there have success with an IR blaster still available? USB-UIRT is $50, so not a cost friendly way to go, and there doesn't appear to be much available.

Is it possible to run a windows xp virtual machine on my windows 8 machine? The MCE blaster works with XP, so that would be my fallback.

Thanks.