SkY systems need the sky box as most for the channels that aren't on freeview are encrypted and the only decoders are in the sky boxes.
The rs232 ports on the sky boxes only out put the info of the current channel playing, can't be used to control the boxes

Yeah you have to trigger a Wake event. Either via a click on the orbiter, or via a hardware wake event. Wake on LAn can be some what tricky to get working as it should do so be warned.

With out the machine on, you will have no joy. What i do is if the machine isn't on is just use the orbitor and click on the room i've moved to. The core then uses Wake on LAn to wake up the MD in that room and the media will start up, it takes about 30s as i have my mds set to suppend and not power off. I guess if you have wake on USB and had a usb device like a wireless mouse/keyboard that could wake the md aswell. If the gyro remotes run as standard input devices then maybe the pc will see that as a keyboard for wake-on events. not got one to try

From what i can remember using pluto, its the key used for the Remote assist

I'll have a look at the bluetooth autodetect software, see if we can mode it to fire off a diffrent event when a wii remote is detected, all it uses is MAC addresses of the bluetooth devices, re-building my dev machine at moment so might take abit.

Update
Used the guide to get working fine on my ubuntu laptop.
Just need to load it up on my lmce machine. once i've done that i'll post some details on the wiki.
Also might need to mod the Gyro mouse plug in so the wii remotes buttons map to the correct buttons.

just got a old squeeze box of ebay to get up first

I've done this on a pluto system ages ago. You need to manualy extract the packaged filesinto the correct dir.
Not near any machines at the moment, but when i am i'll check which paths it need.
Failing that you can edit the sh file that launches the slimserver and point it to the correct path.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=Linux_port_project

The Xbox Media Center has a killer frontend, would be a mega system if integrated with the linuxmce/pluto backend

Theres a guide here
http://www.wiili.org/index.php/Wiimote_linux_tutorial
I've just set up my machine, need to get a bluetooth adapter and should be getting a wii this weekend:)

i'll keep you posted