Lock Keyboard

There have been multiple instances of the following occurence:
I let a movie/show buffer a while.
I start watching and it's all good.
I accidentally press a keyboard number that changes channel so I lose the buffer and therefore miss the bit that I had buffered!

It is very very annoying! Since I have a remote, I don't even need the keyboard. Could someone tell me if there is someway to make it so the keyboard does not do any action when press in MC?

Thanks!

I can think of a few things:

While the show is playing, record it. Even if you hit the numbers then accidentally you will be prompted to stop recording...when done just delete the show if you do not want to keep it.

Watch it in a Window instead of full screen and keep the focus off WMC.

In the TV configuration routine for remote controls, an option of channel entry type is given, one being to just enter the numbers and wait and the other being enter the numbers and enter 'enter' afterwards to confirm...try the latter...should also affect when you use the KB to enter the channel so then you would have to enter the numbers and also hit enter on your KB before the chanel will change.

I have not set WMC up without a remote, but I am guessing the same option would appear for remoteless setups during configuration.

I can't find the setup for the remote control? I only see the setup under DVD

In WMC, navigate to>Tasks>Settings>TV>Set Up TV Signal

During this process you should see the option(s) to configure as noted above.

You could definitely make use of AutoHotKey. One of the program's best features is being able to hook into the... umm... keyboard hook?... and intercept key presses. Added to that the keypress intercept can be program sensitive, so it only applies an intercept when ehshell is the active window for instance.

Basically you download and install AutoHotKey, then write a little *.ahk script that remaps your keys to nothing when ehshell is the active window. It's one of the easiest things to do with the program and I can help you if you like.

Here is an example of a script that, when active, disables the keys "q,w,e,r,t,y" when notepad is the active window.


Download and install AutoHotKey, save the above code into a file called "testqwerty.ahk" (anything .ahk will do obviously), and double click the ahk file. You'll then get a little green H icon in your systray, and while it's running you won't be able to type qwerty into notepad. You can type it in anything else, and you can type QWERTY (uppercase) in notepad, but qwerty is blocked for notepad until you stop the script (exit in the systray H icon)

If this is what you're looking for I can help you modify this to block the keys that are annoying you when media center is active. You can also easily have the ahk script run at login, or better yet, have it run with media center's shortcut.

I'm using autohotkey at the moment to be the default application for RAR, R01, R02 etc files, so that when my wife double clicks an archived avi or mkv, Autohotkey unextracts it to a temporary location (With a green OSD to show the progress) and then opens that avi in Media Center. Works very well

Thanks that helped I can modify it myself to get the keys that were annoying me: NUM 1, 2, and 3

Good to hear

If you have any trouble finding the Media Center equivilant of "ahk_class Notepad" hit me up. The particulars for identifying a program or process or window can be elusive...