Well I bit the bullet and bought the OSMC remote from the shop here and I must say I’m glad I did. I tend to watch most TV with the lights off and quite frankly my original remote was a pain because of all of the buttons and I kept hitting the wrong one when i wanted to pause or FF. The OSMC remote is a vast improvement. It has far fewer buttons, but for playing of videos/music and navigating round the menu it’s perfect.
I’m particularly delighted with the Info and Context menu buttons which are (respectively) a boon for checking the remaining play time, and for queuing up tracks, both of which were missing from my previous remote. It was smaller than I had imagined, but I now realise that size isn’t important (ha ha) and with pared-down controls it’s incredibly easy to navigate by touch for semi-darkness operation.
I was initially dubious about the infra-red dongle as my Pi is nestled under the TV and with the USB ports at the back I might get some dead zones, but that isn’t the case. The IR seems to have a very wide field of reception and picks up the remote no matter where you are and no matter how far away.
It works straight out of the box and absolutely no configuration needed, so my original plan to get my old XBOX remotes working is now obsolete. Heartily recommended!