[voip-ninja]

I'm not sure what's going on with your setup. I actually have one of the handful of older motherboards for Ivy Bridge that has an Intel CIR header on it. I bought a CIR IR receiver from eBay and hooked it up, and OE has always worked with it, it even turns the PC on and off just using the stock "MS Windows" remote presets while using my Harmony One.

If this does not work with the integrated IR in Haswell I'm going to be bummed off. Looks like I'm going to hold off another few weeks before ordering to see how this plays out.

Well it seems that's the thing.. the harmony one apparently seems to work with it, according to this person. I just think the xbox controller doesn't.

Well, it's worth pointing out (I guess) that there are several MS/Media-Center/Xbox remotes... and they don't all work natively with either OE or XBMC. The Harmony One itself isn't doing anything special, you just tell it which device you have and it is programmed with those IR frequencies and key-presses.

If it helps you out, I've programmed the Harmony One with both the "MS Keyboard" remote profile and the "Media Center PC" profile. Each of these profiles offers different keys that OE will recognize with the CIR USB IR... for example, the Media Center PC profile allows for power on and off (although under Windows all it does is a power suspend, it does do a real power on/off with OE).

My "XBMC" device profile has buttons from both devices programmed, so I can do things like get the "info" or "debug" window up in OE very easily.

You can get a Harmony remote pretty cheap, rather than trying a grab-bag of 3rd party remotes that may or may not work properly maybe you should just pick up a Harmony from Amazon. You can get one for $50 or so and then you also have the advantage of having a remote that can work your TV, cablebox/DVR, AVR, etc.