Looking in your profile, it seems right off the bat the only device you could control with 232 is the Yamaha amp. Yamaha has extended IR codesets that can do pretty much anything you could want to do, depending on the model.

I'm not sure if the europesn version of things is different, but i've never seen a Samsung BD or LCD that can be controlled via 232 (I know some guys here are working on some tricky stuff on the new samsung LCD's).