I try to be practical about this stuff, especially as I am charging to program and don't want to waste my time. The difference is that it works learning directly to the remote and it sometimes works learning through the remote to the computer. I take "works" over "sometimes works" every time.

I used to have a corporate job where I would still get paid if I stopped making progress to research the answers to such questions, but can't always afford to do that now.

I ran across this warning early on, and in five years of programming remotes, I have never had a single learning problem except the kind that is corrected by having the correct lighting, distance, etc. And of course I have been bitten once or twice by switching from Pronto to Marantz and trying to learn into the wrong end of the thing!