What I am wanting is to control my VCR and cable set top box via my PC's IR port.

Specifically, I want to read the TV guide at the beginning of the month and program all the channel changes and VCR commands to record where necesary and then be able to forget about it.

The thought of trying to write some software from scratch seems too hard. In an ideal world I would find some VB code to get me started but any sugegstion for an approach would be very useful.

If not using the computer, my other option would be to figure out which programmable remote would facilitate this. Any thoughts very welcome!

Thanks.