So, just the remote control to do now.   A few weeks ago, I bought an FLIRC USB dongle and a One For All remote control, which can work as a Microsoft Media Center (sic) remote if you use the code 1272 on it.  Configuring the FLIRC device was pretty much as simple as plugging the dongle into a USB port and running the supplied software on it (I used the Windows version, but there is also a Linux version too).

Although the FLIRC dongle isn’t the most elegant way of doing it, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be compatible with almost everything as it converts remote control keypresses into real keyboard keypresses which I can then pass to Kodi.

One thing that did trip me up a bit is that some remote controls, apparently including the MS one mine was emulating, send different codes per alternate keypress so you have to program each key twice to make both alternate codes respond to the same keypress to make it work correctly.

That said, I’ve got it all working and I now pretty much have a functional PVR just in time for Christmas.