A friend gave me this PC remote from CDRKing
And I tried it out with my HTPC. My HTPC is running on Windows XP with XBMC as my media center and using VLC as my external player to play mkv and avi files. The IR receiver was easily detected and out of the box the up, down, left, right, enter, back, clear (quit), stop and power buttons were functioning already. I was already satisfied with the el cheapo replacement for my wireless keyboard and Hippo remote (Ipad). I wanted to get the most out of the device and good thing with VLC you can assign hot keys to your keyboard or remote for different functions.
I assigned 1 for cycling through audio tracks, 2 for cycling subtitles & 3 for cycling aspect ratios. There are still other functions that I can assign to the different numbers but so far this meets my needs. I find eventghost to be complicated and I was able to program the remote without it.
I also tried using the IR receiver for my Logitech Harmony but it seems that it cannot detect it. I programmed Harmony for the Silverstone and Windows Media Center remotes but to no avail.
Are there other media players where you can program hotkeys for your remote? So far VLC has been giving me good service and is the most versatile that I have tried so far.