IR is a two edged sword in LMCE here, and it comes down to how the IR transceivers all work internally:
(1) for learning and blasting codes, we use PRONTO codes, a very standardized way to encode complex IR pulses. If you use a device that can learn IR codes supported by LinuxMCE (USBUIRT, Tira, IRTrans, GC100 with a GCC-IRL dongle), this is what you will see. the LIRC_DCE device does not support learning PRONTO codes, but it does support blasting PRONTO codes. You can get PRONTO codes at such sites as Remote Central (
http://www.remotecentral.com/)
(2) Such IR transceivers can also recognize IR pulses from remotes to control an on-screen orbiter, and its current active application. In this case, however, due to the subtle differences in how the IR transceivers work, we store remote control definitions in the internal code format used by the device itself (for LIRC, this is an LIRC configuration file for a given remote, for the others, it's a specific format internal to their receiver.) You will see as you add a device for an IR transceiver, you will see an additional device added which has device data for the given remote (usually a Windows Media Center remote.)
-Thom
