How to use a Harmony remote on a PC?

[Dillz]

I want to get a harmony remote and use it to control media portal on my PC which has Windows XP home installed, but I understand that the remote doesn't come with an infrared receiver.

If I were to buy say a Shuttle XPC remote control which costs £20 or the laptop remote control from Maplin would the Harmony controller work with the receiver. I have looked on ebay but everything seems to be irda.

Also anyone know if an MCE remote will work with XP Home, and whether the Harmony controller will work with the MCE receiver, as these can be picked up quite cheap?

Can anyone advise.

Thanks

 

[meansizzler]

an official mce remote and recievr will work with windows xp pro, so it shoudl work with xp home, i did not need a driver to get to to work with xp pro, i used it to control media player 9...also the harmony will work work like the mce remote but oyu need to buy the mce reciever..

 

[markhudds2]

I think the drivers required for the MCE remote/reciever only come with MCE or XP Service Pack 2 for non MCE XP.

The drivers, by default, only work with the standard MCE commands so to work with another application, the app would either have to provide support natively or you would have to replace the MS driver with one that can be used in something like girder (there's a plugin on their website I believe).

As I'm a MCE user I'm not too familiar with Media Portal, however I did hear that it supports the MCE remote/receiver. If that's the case then Harmony remote configuration will be easy for you as you can just take the MCE2005 device entry from their database i.e. no learning to do.

The other advantage of using the MCE remote commands is that you have a reliable way of turning on/off via the power toggle (assuming your PC settings are correct for S3 sleep/wake). I couldn't find any reliable way of doing this prior to the MCE remote.

 

[Dillz]

Since posting yesterday, I read on another forum that the MCE remote will only work on MCE or XP Pro. Apparantly it doesn't work on XP home because the drivers are incompatible.

As the Harmony remote is also aimed at MCE users, I don't think that I would have any success using it with XP Home and a third party IR receiver, and media portal software. I guess that instead of trying to turn XP home into MCE, I'll have to bite the bullet and buy MCE if I want all the functionality.