Turn Your Monitor Off with your Hauppauge Remote Control through IR

Here is what I have on my computer. This same procedure may work for other computer setups, but I haven't tried any of them out. My guess is it should work for any hauppauge video card as long as you are using IR. It should even work for the newer HD cards.

OS: Windows XP
TV tuner Card: WinTV-PVR 350
Remote Software: IR (provided by hauppauge)
TV Viewing Software: wintv2k (this shouldn't matter as the tv is turned off when the monitor gets shut off)

1. Find the irremote.ini file on your computer
Mine was located in C:\WINDOWS. This is the file that tells the IR program what to do when keys are pressed on the remote. There are sections of command in this file for the various programs you can control with IR.

2. BACK UP THIS FILE
Back up the irremote.ini file. We are going to try to modify it, but if something goes wrong. You will need a backup.

3. Download Wizmo
Wizmo is the program that enables you to turn off your monitor. The easiest place to download it to is C:\. Don't download it to a directory with a space in the path like "My Documents", as it just makes the procedure more confusing.

4. Edit irremote.ini
The irremote.ini file is broken down into sections depending on what program you are using at the time. I wanted to be able to call the turn off of my monitor with my remote when all of the tv software was off, so I put my command in the default section. You can find it by looking for:

[Default]

Below the default section is the mapping for what all of the remote keys do when pressed. In my file I noticed the yellow button was commented out, meaning nothing was assigned to it:

;;YELLOW={close(radio.exe)}{sleep(750)}{run(..\vtplus\vtplus32.exe)}

I changed this line to the following:

YELLOW={close(radio.exe)}{sleep(750)}{run(C:\wizmo.exe monoff)}

Basically, this line tells IR that whenever the yellow button is pressed it could call wizmo with the monoff command. That wizmo command turns off the monitor. It will only work when none of the other tv viewing programs are running because the code was put in the default section. If you wanted to have it turn off during other applications, you could add similar lines to irremote.ini.

5. Restart IR and Enjoy
Now all that is left to do is restart IR (through the Restart IR command on the start menu provided by hauppauge). You should now be able to turn off your monitor with your hauppauge remote control.