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Now if I could just use the laptop for all of my TV's other functions I'd be pretty happy.

If you don't mind experimenting, this looks like it might be an interesting way to get a Windows system to control any IR device... but I have not tried it. http://www.usbuirt.com/

I've been using Snapstream BeyondTV for 4 years. I started first with a Hauppauge SD tuner card. I now have a Happaugue HD-PVR, a Motorola HD FiOS box and change channels with a USB-UIRT. The Motorola HD box connects the HD-PVR with component video and optical SPDIF cables. The HD-PVR connects to my Win7-x64 system via USB.

BeyondTV downloads the TV guide, manages the recording schedule and controls the HD-PVR and Motorola HD box with the USB-UIRT. The recording format is an H.264 transport stream (the file type is .tp) which uses about 3.6 GB per hour on the HD-High quality setting. These files are readily burned to a Blu-ray disk without re-encoding. The system is completely seamless.

My next step is to configure a DLNA enabled LG Blu-ray player in my living room to which I can stream the recorded files.

If I understand correctly, the frustration with the remote is more about how the same keyboard keypresses do different things in mplayer or xine than they do in the actual myth UI/player, is that the case?

If so, then I used to be frustrated by the same thing. But now that I've done a frontend using Mythbuntu, they have different conf files for each app (mythtv/mplayer/xine/etc), all automatically setup when you select your remote from a pull-down menu. That way you don't have to remember different remote buttons for the same functionality in different programs. It makes things very nice.

In my case, things got a little more complicated, because I had a receiver that wasn't tied to any particular remote, and a Harmony remote that I could program with any set of codes I wanted. I tried to set up lirc from the Mythbuntu Control Center to use the Windows Media Center remote codes, but then it set up the hardware.conf file to use the driver for the MCE receiver, instead of the one I had, so I did have to do some hand-editing of that conf file, but it ended up being not too bad, once I figured out a little bit about how lirc works.

Poor man's version of this is to use a USB IR transmitter. You basically position it in front of TV's IR sensor and connect to the computer with a very long USB cable (typically provided). The only issue is that some remotes use custom IR frequencies that are not supported by readily available transmitters.

I have the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 running on an Athlon 2200+ w/ 512 MB RAM, 16G OS/software hard drive, 250 GB video hard drive (both IDE). The machine also supports a DVD burner, and a USB-UIRT for remote controlling my cable box. The PVR portion of it comes from Sage TV. Oh, and the wireless. Mustn't forget the wireless.

This setup gives me a PVR package that has superior capabilities to my old DirecTiVo, but slightly (SLIGHTLY!) inferior quality. It records MPEG video that I can easily work with in many video players, video editors, and DVD authoring/burning packages. I can watch videos either streamed over wireless from the SageTV box's hard drive, or I can use the SageTV Client software.

The only weakness is slow channel change times (2 seconds or so). The computer has to control the cable box through IR, and in order to guarantee precision it "punches the remote control buttons" slowly. However, channel surfing is something I don't miss -- now the machine just records what I want, I watch it when I'm damn good and ready, and skipping commercials requires only a few taps on a key on the wireless keyboard I use to control the computer. (I could use a regular remote through the USB-UIRT but the keyboard is faster (though bulkier)).

Hardware: Old Dell optiplex 110 with Pentium III 800MHz, 256Mb RAM, DLink 802.11b PCI wi-fi card. Cost - a favour to a buddy.

Additions: Hauppauge PVR-350, 200Gb Seagate Barracuda, USBUIRT http://www.usbuirt.com/. Cost of additions - £ 216

Wi-Fi with MythTV was hell, PAL TV out with X-Windows was hell, S-Video input with MythTV was hell, EPG download from http://www.bleb.org/tv with MythTV was flaky, IR support for driving my Cable set-top-box was not great.

I tried a copy of XP MCE, but unless you have certified hardware, forget this being easy or stable, so I went on the hunt for Windows based PVR software and came across http://www.gbpvr.com/.

I must say I have been suitably impressed with ease of setup, ease of use, stability and features. Pretty much all of the MythTV features, but a lot easier to set up. Total setup time from blank hard drive to working GBPVR on XP in under 2 hours on above hardware. MythTV took a weekend to have partial functionality working on the same box. The USBUIRT works well with GBPVR, and GBPVR is able to pull EPG from Bleb (Or other XMLTV sources). Main problem now is 256Mb of RAM is just not quite enough for XP... the box is now deemed prototype, waiting for more cash to buy a new barebones system with decent CPU and RAM. Probably go for a Shuttle small form factor like one of these ST62K's http://www.de.shuttle.com/en/desktopdefault.aspx/t abid-72/170_read-2782/

All that we use to control our HTPC is a Logitech MX 700 wireless mouse. With the HTPC app that we use, SageTV, everything is accessible from a mouse-driven interface. We don't use that computer for email or games requiring a keyboard. My only complaint about the mouse is that its range is only about 10 feet.

The only thing that we can't do with the mouse is turn on the TV and the stereo. I am planning on programming one of the extra buttons on the mouse to do this. I'm planning on using it to launch a macro via the software program Girder that will send all of the appropriate IR commands out of the USB-UIRT IR blaster/receiver to turn on all the devices and switch their inputs accordingly. That should solve the only problem we have, which is explaining to babysitters how to use the TV.