"I have been fortunate enough to have been a beta tester for Frank's
FirM. While the original concept was that it should be used with
Homevision, Frank has designed a PC interface to allow the product to
work with Dan's Infrared Manager product. I built up one of these PC
interfaces with some help from Frank and have modified LIRC (Linux
Infrared Controller) to support FirM via this interface. While many see
IR systems as simply repeaters to get IR to their AV equipment in some
cupboard, FirM allows much more than this because of the zoning concept.
The ability to know which zone sent a command allows one to use the same
remote in different zones (read rooms) and for button pushes to perform
functions applicable to that zone. For example if I push 'play' in a
room then it plays music into that room, similarly "volume up" only
increases the volume in that room. Knowing which room a command came
from can be quite powerful. I actually feed all the IR commands via a
programable controller ("Misterhouse") which increases the flexibility
even further.

Because the product does no decoding itself (you need Homevision, LIRC
or Dan's IR Manager to achieve that) it will support a majority of
remotes out there ie. those with the carrier frequency around 38KHz.

The quality of Frank's product is excellent and Frank is great to deal
with. In my opinion FirM fills a gap in terms of price vs performance
and if you feel you would benefit from a zoned system then FirM is worth
a look."

Cheers
Shane