[corona]

The reason I use the browser script is so I can start a custom lirc process just for Netflix and disable lirc in xbmc at same time. If we can properly support Linux remote controls would be happy to drop it

Ah... I gladly moved away from lirc a few years ago now, it was always a headache to deal with.
The kernel rc support is so much nicer, all the key remapping I need in a single config file in etc and then the remote just acts like a normal keyboard - much easier. I've picked up a couple of $20 'mce' style remotes&usb receivers on ebay, the advantage of them being the receivers have been multi-protocol so the one receiver has worked well with multiple disparate remotes.

I am playing around with getting the kernel rc stuff working with xbmc. Can you recommend any good tutorials especially for mapping things like KEY_OK and KEY_EXIT to appropriate xbmc ones

I remap any keys like those to more normal keyboard ones, ie KEY_OK -> Space and KEY_EXIT -> Escape.
I'm coming from a mythtv background though (~10 year), and have only been using xbmc regularly for about 6 months. To ease this transition with my partner I've put a lot of work into making my xbmc behave more like myth, so my key choices reflect that.

Basically I have a modified rc script in /etc/rc_keymaps/rc6_mce with keymaps for my two main remotes (I've got three floating around that get used interchangeably)
http://pastebin.com/qNxyXzMf
I then force this script to get loaded at startup, as I had problems making it work automatically:
/etc/rc.local :

Code:

/usr/bin/ir-keytable -P 1000 -c -w /etc/rc_keymaps/rc6_mce

There's also ways to ensure this gets run via udev etc so that it's right after receiver is unplugged/replugged but I'm not sure that I've bothered with that at the moment, can't remember for sure.
This is all dependent on the receiver having right drivers etc.

Code:

ir-keytable

with no arguments will print out any it finds. Then with -t to get printouts of keypresses to match up with what's desired in the config file.