[mythtv-users] AppleTV, lirc, and a Bose Lifestyle RF Remote

[Scott D. Davilla]

>Do a little research: apple remotes send some sort of special ID code
>along with every message, so its super unlikely that some standard
>pack of codes would work. Your best bet would be obtaining a remote
>that can learn codes, find about 15 friends with apple remotes and
>teach each button on your learning remote one of the codes from the
>various remotes, then set up lirc to use those codes. I think the high
>end harmony remotes work with RF systems so you could still use your
>bose system (but not its remote unless it has learning capabilities).

There's someone on the atv-bootloader mailing list that is doing this 
a learning remote. You don't need 15 friends, it can be done with a 
single Apple IR remote

>Why on earth apple crippled their IR hardware as such is a mystery.
>Especially since you don't have to pair your remote with your
>computer/aTV (that would make some sense so your neighbor holding down
>the play button on his remote won't put your laptop to sleep).

Apple is not responsible for making sure that other IR remotes work 
with their IR controller. Why should they? That's not it's design 
function. They designed their IR controller to preprocess IR signals 
and only pass valid HID events to the OS. It's very robust and works 
every time with their IR remote and off loads the grunt work to the 
IR controller. If you want raw IR signal processing, well that's a 
different product.

Why they did this is no mystery. It's a real pain in the rear to 
design a robust IR controller that handles every existing and future 
IR remote. Many protocols, many frequencies to handle, software 
wizards that need to work, etc. Doing this would add to the design 
cost and ultimately result in a higher product cost.