Using this infrared receiver with your PC will let you control your favourite programs using a readily-available RC5 transmitter: useful if your PC has a suitable video card and you use it as a television, or if you want to use Winamp, for example, to play MP3 files through your hi-fi.If you want to install a PC in your living room as a television or as part of your hi-fi setup, a remote control is practically indispensable. Who wants the trouble of going to the PC’s keyboard to adjust the volume or change channels? Unfortunately, PCs do not offer built-in infrared receivers compatible with ordinary transmitters. And so we must make the necessary hard- and software ourselves.There are several steps involved in getting a PC to react to the pulses of infrared sent out by the transmitter. Hardware is required to receive the pulses and process them into a form suitable for input to a microcontroller, where, according to how the user has programmed it, they can be translated into a different format.