Programming your MCE remote

Some Media Center remote controls enable you to teach them to turn on/off your TV and/or control the volume of your receiver. I love this feature and recently someone emailed asking how to set it up. Fortunately a co-worker had a manual because I couldn’t remember how to do this.

To program buttons on your MCE remote control.

  1. Place the MCE remote control head to head (2 to 3 inches apart) with the remote control from which it is learning.
  2. On the MCE remote control press and hold the DVD MENU and OK buttons at the same time until the remote control lights turn off (2 seconds). The remote is now in learning mode.
  3. On the MCE remote control press and release the TV, VOL +, VOL - button, depending on which command you want it to learn. The MCE remote control lights blink once to confirm the selection.
  4. On the remote control that is teaching the command, press and hold the button that you want the coressponding button on the MCE remote control. The MCE remote control lights blink twice to confrim the selection. If the remote does not learn the command, the lights blink quickly four times. To try again repeat steps 1 through 4.
  5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 for the other buttons that can learn commands.

To restore:

  1. Press and hold the DVD MENU button and LEFT navigation button at the same time until the MCE remote control lights turn off
  2. Press the OK button. The lights will blink twice to confirm that the buttons have been reset. If not it will blink four times.
March 13th 2006 Posted to Random

Comments

  1. Tiernans Comms Closet
    March 14th, 2006 | 4:12 am

    teach your media center remote control

    If you have a media center, and you want your media center remote to do other things (like turn on and…

  2. Larry
    November 21st, 2006 | 9:44 pm

    what if it always returns four flashes? I have the rc6 version.

  3. AVforum.no - MCE keyboard - "volume up"-tasten virker ikke..
    February 20th, 2007 | 9:11 pm

    […] Takk! Viste ikke at den kunne "l?re" Info: Matt Goyer’s Media Center Blog ? Programming your MCE remote __________________ HTPC? Pr?v MediaPortal […]

  4. craigw
    March 23rd, 2007 | 9:48 am

    hi,

    i need to programatically detect if the Green Start button has been pressed on the microsfot IR remote control - anybody got a way of doing it? nearly every key is documented as readable apart from the Start key! (???)

    thanks

    craigw.

  5. megan
    December 3rd, 2007 | 8:37 pm

    hello. i’m trying to set up my windows media center so i can get live feed from my cable television, but during the setup it is receiving the tv signal, but says my ir control cables aren’t hooked up. my ir is hooked up and my microsoft remote is working through it, i checked my drivers and they seem to be ok. any suggestions of what i might need to do?

  6. John
    January 24th, 2008 | 10:37 pm

    I have same problem, that is IR control cables aren’t hooked up…so no tv on windows media center. Did anyone give you an answer to fixing the error message?

  7. Omar
    July 4th, 2008 | 10:53 am

    By IR cables it mens little black extender wires which plug into the USB adapter. These allow Media Center to control your cable box. You should have got some with your PC / Remote.

    Without them, MCE wouldn’t be able to change the channel on your cable box, making it pretty useless. :-)

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