I recently purchased an IguanaWorks USB IR transceiver ($45 to my door). If any of you are OpenWrt enthusiasts, I have it controlling a Time Warner DVR (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD) through my Linksys WRTSL54GS running a Kamikaze 7.09/2.6 variant. If and/or when I get irreco talking to the router's lircd I'll post some notes/debs/Makefiles/etc. This should be much friendlier than using irsend.

I recommend all hardware and software mentioned above.