>>Whoa. "ordinary" TV or VCR remotes are far removed from true IrDa devices.
>
>
>whinny !! ok, maybe i misunderstood what Nuno was trying to do (as
>described in his original post). i thought he was trying to use
>the serial infrared port on his laptop to read the "characters"
>which were being emitted by a "ordinary" remote control.
>
>i was of same opinion as you, that the "ordinary" remote control
>pulse-train patterns are not ASCII patterns, and that he should
>not expect to be able to read any 'characters' with that setup.

Yep. While the IR/serial port might detect the pulse stream, I doubt anything sensible would come out of it. Now, could one write a bit of software to decode it? Sure. It would work great for one model of TV/remote ONLY.

I have 'probed' the IR LED before on a TV remote just to satisfy my own curiosity. I didn't learn very much. :>)