IR control of computer functions

My immediate need is that I'd like to be able to control a software DVD player from my IR remote control. The player has single stroke keyboard shortcuts for most operational commands though there are probably a few things that would require multi stroke commands.

I expected that Nirvis would ship with some sort of generic IR to keyboard mapping program or that I would find one in the user submitted section. It doesn't appear that there is. I see some programs for controlling specific computer DVD players and I could adapt one of those or write something similar that hardcoded the commands I need. But it doesn't seem like it would be that much harder to write something generic that will map any command from any device file to any series of keystrokes. It'll be fun - I don't do much programming for myself anymore. But before I embark on this, does something like this already exist that I'm missing? I don't want to duplicate something that's already out there.

If I write this I'll do it in VC++ because that's the environment I know best. Is there any reason to favor the MFC classes vs. the COM object? I looked at them briefly and it looks like there might be a problem with the MFC classes as I would want to use them. It looked like the method that registered a callback function required a predefined callback for each device that I would monitor. This would be a problem since my program would monitor a variable number of devices. It was unclear to me whether the message parameter I get in the callback also contains the device. This isn't an issue with the COM object because it has one event handler that receives both the device and message as parameters.

Thanks for any help.