Best Inexpensive Remote To Use With WMC

When I came to this question, I didn’t think the microsoft media center remotes were flexible enough (in that i wanted to be ablet o power on the television and control my receiver as well) so I went with a USB IR Receiver from ebay:

something like this (5$): http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gateway-Symphony-USB-IR-Remote-Receiver-grey-/160655073639?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2567c9e167#ht_2038wt_1396

and a standard universal remote (15$):

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-SRP1507-27-Universal-featuring/dp/B004PYS45K/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1327502632&sr=8-6

there are free programs to let you assign actions to each button, but I never quite got them to work so i splurged for intelliremote (24$):

http://melloware.com/products/intelliremote/

its a nice flexible system and is close to your budget.

I dont want to say anything definitively because I really only have what I have googled in the past and my own experience but with that caveat:

it is my belief that it is possible that a random USB IR receiver you purchase from ebay to be programmed/designed to only receive IR codes in different frequencies than what your remote outputs. But that in practice most remotes are close enough, such that you will almost certainly be fine. I couldn’t prove the receiver i bought would work with my remote, but I bought it and it did. I think most receivers from gateway/hp/whatever have a little red LED that blinks everytime it receivers an IR signal, so you know its physically working even if you are having trouble getting your computer to recognize that its receiving a code.

if you were really worried and wanted to spend some money (which you dont appear to be), you can always buy a USB-UIRT which has been designed to accept IR codes from pretty much anything you could find, but its 50$:

http://www.usbuirt.com/

as for the software, the main ones I know of are HIP, Girder, and Intelliremote. They work by monitoring the IR receiver, when it receives an IR code, it passes it to the program. From there, the program sees what command you want executed when that IR code is received, and executes it. I dont know exactly why HIP wouldnt work for me, but I found intelliremote to ‘just work’ and its not that expensive. they are all very powerful in what you can do, they can even execute scripts.

Thanks, guys, for all your help!  I really didn’t think that the remote was going to be the most frustrating part of this process but it’s always the little things.  I think I’m going to try and get one of those $5 ir receivers and a couple of the refurbished Harmony 300’s on Newegg and see how it goes.  Next up is trying to decide which plugins to install on my main system!

Thanks for the suggestion about the keyboard.  I think I’m going to stay away from that though cause I want to try and make this as seemless a transition as possible for my wife.

I was doing a bit more looking and I went to buy.com which i hadn’t previously.  The first result that came up when I searched ‘media center remote’ was the XBox 360 universal remote which it says controls the TV and a media center PC.  Microsoft is selling a newer version on their site, a black one, but I don’t care which it is just as long as it controls the TV.  The big question is, will it work with one of those random IR receiver’s from ebay like the $5 one listed in the post above?  I searched how to get it to work with a PC and it said it would as long as I had the Microsoft remote IR receiver 1.0A.  I hope I’m not beating a dead horse but just throwing this out there in case someone has got it to work!

Alright, so I decided on a remote.  I found this while doing some more research yesterday and it apparently will control 3 components as a media center remote.  It’s the Noah Company MediaGate GV-IR01BK.  It’s only got 4 reviews on Amazon and I couldn’t find out much more about it, but it seems to be exactly what I was looking for.  I got two of them so once I get them and set one up I’ll come back and let everyone know how it works.  Thanks again for all the input!

Well I’ve been using this remote now for about 2 weeks and I’m pretty sure I have a final opinion on it.

Quality: it is very light and does not feel very substantial in your hand at all.  My wife and I are used to the remotes from Verizon for FiOS which I’ve always liked.  The plastic on the remote feels like it would break if dropped, and since it’s got a glossy smooth finish if your hands are sweaty for any reason it gets slippery and attracts smudges and fingerprints very easily.  Although a lot of the buttons are small they do have a nice solid feel when you press them.

Layout: this is probably the most frustrating thing about this remote.  Again, I’ve always felt Verizon’s remotes had the stuff you used the most in the right places.  This remote has the buttons we use the most spread out everywhere.  The Live TV, Recorded TV, and Guide buttons are these tiny little things way down at the bottom, where the playback buttons are all the way at the top.  In my opinion, the Live TV, etc. buttons should be right between the playback buttons and the aarows/OK buttons.  It just makes it awkward when you’re constantly using the aarow buttons to navigate and you have to move the remote around in your hand just to get to the tiny little guide button at the bottom.  I don’t think the size would matter as much if they were in a better place.

Response: when pointed at the IR receiver the response is actually very good.  Very few dropped presses and things happen fairly quickly.  No real complaints, just a nitpick about having to be pretty accurate with where you’re pointing the remote.

Set-up of other functions: this was another sore point.  Although the instructions made it sound very easy to make this remote learn a function from another one, it took me forever to get it into discovery mode.  It’s a very precise combo/order you have to hit to get it in this mode and I stumbled on it by accident.  Once I did, however, it learned the on/off function of my TV remote and volume up no problem.  I figured since I did the volume button it would do both up and down, but that’s not the case.

Controlling other components: this was the main feature I was looking for in a remote.  The ability to simply turn my TV and the PC on with the same remote.  Although it does do this, there’s one thing that really makes it annoying.  When I press the TV function button at the top to turn the TV on, it freezes on this function and won’t let you do anything else.  So basically, I hit the button and the TV button lights up blue to let you know you switched functions.  But then it just stays blue for like 20 or so seconds and doesn’t let you switch to the PC function until the light turns off. 

Bottom Line: I’d probably give it 2.5 stars out of 5.  It works well as a Media Center Remote, but is just overall frustrating to use and feels cheap.  One day I’ll probably switch to the Harmony line of remotes, but we’re sticking with this for now.