Thanks for all your helpful responses!

I had done a bit of research on my own but this still gave me some new
valuable pieces of info.

Dave Hylands wrote:

> I'm not sure what you mean by "Consumer IR".
> 

Just to distinguish it from serial communication via IR.

> This link
> describes a variety of the remote control protocols:
> http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/remote/

This was particularly helpful. According to this text, it seems possible to
use a trick to simulate remote control signals by sending standard serial
I/O signals via an IR port: Sending the right bits at the right speed and
comm. settings and so on can simulate the appropriate remote control
signals. This simplifies the problem very very much since all IR-capable
devices seem to provide a way to use it for serial communication.

Supposedly this should be able to handle "learning" foreign signals as well.

I am saying "it seems" since I haven't tried it yet.

> Windows CE has some a socket mode to open the IR port as
> (sort of) a raw device.  If you hook up it with Squeak, it
> would be more flexible.
> 
> -- Yoshiki

Thanks, I will look at that if I need it.

Henrik