A friend has a Sky+ Box - and a Media Centre system (Vista) system with the small IR dongles which you can put in front of a Sky/Set top Box and have the ability to change the channel on the Sky box using the MCE remote.
The challenge? Well the system thinks it has paired the remote and for some odd reason it doesn't work.
The box is a Pace box - 3.057 model, version 9f2103, OS 1.31aoe
