Lircd is great on providing support for usual remote controls. In case of the device is an input device inputlircd is by far the better option. It takes the input events and translates them to lircd events. This makes it very easy, since no key needs to be defined explicitly, those if started with the right options (http://www.digipedia.pl/man/doc/view/inputlircd.8/) the keys will be directly available at the lircd socket.

Started with no further options it is enough to chose it from the webfrontend and chose the device from the dropdown. If you want to set options for inputlirc, this can be done in /etc/default/inputlirc. Also you can define additional devices or wildcards to the same. In case of the gyration, this is -m 0 (capture all, not just special keys) and -c (use of modifier case as modifier key, not as key on its own).

/etc/default/inputlircd

 # Options to be passed to inputlirc.
EVENTS="/dev/input/by-id/usb-Gyration_Gyration_RF_Technology_Receiver-event-*"
OPTIONS="-c -m 0

You could also use -g if there is nothing but the Remote Control at the input device. For the Gyration this would block the mouse and the keyboard functionality, which is not desired. In order to make sure VDR is not getting any keys twice (-g would allready take care of this), you need to disable any keyboard input which you not want. This can be done by removing any XKeySym entries from /var/lib/vdr/remote.conf for vdr-sxfe@xineliboutput, or to configure all keys to VOID in /etc/xine/keymap for xine as output device.

XBMC

The input events (basically normal keyboard presses) reach X normally, so for XBMC most of the keys are just working. However, you can face the situation that some key presses will not be recognized. This happens for Keys, where the keycode is above 255. Input is defining standard events for all sorts of Keys. This exceeds by far 255 keys. Xorg however does not cover these keys. The situation is well known since years, but there has not been any action lately. So what to do to get the best of both worlds ? Use both ! All normal keys will be directly there allready. Everything else needs to be mapped with Lircmap.xml, so it can be taken from inputlirc.

inputlircd and DVB card remote controls

A lot of dvb cards providing IR control which is made available as input device to the system. If you see, that not all keys are working, first try the different options mentioned earlier. If there are still keys not available - its possible that your remote is not implemented properly by the driver. this happens often because dvb card vendors change components at will, whatever is cheapest at the moment. The DVB developers need to keep in touch with this development - and this is only second priority, the dvb functionality is more important actually (understandable) . However - situation is going to improve in the near future. One of the ongoing projects is to cleanup this area - also involving remote controls provided by this devices. We might see in a few months, how successfull this will be. Collecting a list of properly working remotes, not properly working remotes as well as other information to get YOUR remote running might also help to improve the situation.