Cool. Why? Don't get me wrong, I still think that Total Remote's native mode is easier to deal with than CCF mode, but I am always curious to hear why someone does not wish to use CCFs.


The concept is often referred to as "punch-thru", but tragically Total Remote does not currently support a universal punch-thru function. This can be worked around, but not super elegantly. I assume here that you want to control a receiver's volume regardless of what other device you are controlling. My example will cite a receiver and a DVD player.

Make a custom DVD skin. The big trick here is we can define all sorts of cool and non-obvious functionality when making custom skins. Use the standard mask colors of "volume up" and "volume down" for the receiver; do NOT use these for the DVD player, even if the DVD player does have it's own volume control. For the DVD player, create up/down buttons using some of the undefined mask colors. You can make the receiver's volume controls visible on the skin by defining button up/down states for each button, or you can make what I call "invisible targets" that are made of JUST a mask and no button up/down image. Place these in some apparently empty space somewhere on your custom skin; as an example take a look at the standard DVD skin that comes with Total Remote, and notice that there is some empty space around the central navigation pad. It isn't too hard to see how you could squeeze a couple of masks in those areas to create buttons that could not be seen but could be triggered. Once you have made your skin with the receiver's controls using the standard mask colors for vol+/- (but no visible buttons) and your DVD vol+/- control using undefined mask colors AND plainly visible buttons, you can assign codes to them. Get both OEM remotes, enter learning mode, learn all the codes from your DVD player remote that you need to complete your custom layout, then learn the vol+/- commands from your receiver remote onto the invisible buttons you made. Remember, just because the masked area lacks a visible button up/down state doesn't mean squat; button images do not define the button, the mask does. You can click on "invisible" buttons just like any button, but you will not see ANY indication of it on the PPC. That is why you must know the exact placement of the mask, since you will be "clicking blind". No one else, not even an experienced user, will be able to tell where the invisible buttons are without looking at the skin file itself.

BTW, a simple way of doing this on skins that already have a volume control (such as the TV skin) is to take the standard skin, add two invisible buttons with the standard vol+/- mask colors, and change the existing volume control to use other mask colors.

What does all this do? By using the standard vol+/- masks you can control then from the hardware buttons (by default it is the D-pad's left and right controls), and by using something OTHER than the standard vol+/- colors you can still define volume controls that can be accessed on-screen for those (assumedly) few times you will ever need them.

Last thought: a REALLY damn easy way of doing most of this would be to simply overwrite the existing volume controls with the ones from your receiver. If you have a TV device/skin that is completely programmed, you can use learning mode to overwrite the volume buttons with the codes from your receiver's remote. Of course this means you cannot control the TV anymore, but most people with a home entertainment or home theater system usually route all audio through a home stereo anyway, so you may never ever need the volume controls for your TV, and not mind giving them up.

Damn, that was a LONG tutorial. I better save that for the manual. :)


--Don, Pixel-pushing pontificator of the PPC remote