I registered just to let you know about a temporary fix (sorry, didn't read through the 11 pages, so if it was already posted - I apologize).
I'm not the one who found it, I stumbled upon the fix on XBMC Remote development site, I think.
Anyway - the issue is with Gingerbread's implementation of network socket functions which are used by the remote. For some reason, when you use an IP address in the XBMC Remote, it will try to resolve it's ARPA notation through DNS instead of connecting directly. Why is it doing so, I have no idea, and it doesn't happen on Honeycomb, and hopefully also fixed on ICS.
For now, though, there are two workarounds:
1. Use the hostname (it's the cleanest solution, but unfortunately doesn't work for me).
2. Edit the hosts file on your rooted phone. The file /system/etc/hosts contains DNS resolutions which the phone tries to use before contacting a DNS server. Add the following line to it (supposing the IP address of your computer running XBMC is 192.168.0.111) :
Code:
192.168.0.111 [i]xbmchostname[/i]
Now you can use the hostname on your phone, and it will work. In fact, to my surprise (I still haven't figured that out, but what the hell), if you'll use the IP address after that it will work as well. So theoretically, you can write anything you want instead of
xbmchostname, and it'll work (just don't write something real like google.com, or else you won't be able to access that from the phone).
P.S.: Editing system files is for advanced users, and you do so on your own responsibility.