USB Receiver Advice?

Hello,

In short, I'm having some issues with my ir setup, and am looking for 
some advice on how to continue.

TL;DR version: what's the best/easiest rock-solid usb ir receiver 
option?

The long version:

I previously had a homebrew serial ir receiver along with a tivo directv 
remote, and it worked wonderfully (very responsive, accurate, great 
range).

My next computer upgrade didn't have serial, so I opted for an hp mce 
usb receiver from ebay.  There were some issues using this receiver with 
usb2, so I pursued[1] getting a patch upstream to get it working.

The problem is, it only "registers" about 80% of the button presses. 
I'm not sure where the issue lies.  mceusb driver issue?  Pulse 
frequency mismatch issue?  (ie: remote is 38kHz, and I think the mce 
receiver is 36kHz?)  Not sure... Any thoughts on this?

In any case, I started investigating other options.  I happened to 
stumble upon building a receiver with an ftdi chip.  I got a 
TTL-232R-3V3-PCB and a TSOP53438 from digikey and soldered it together. 
It seems to have great range, and xmode2 looks pretty good.  But, when I 
go to use irrecord to generate a remote file, I get the following error:

     Something went wrong: Cannot decode data

I can record in "raw" mode, but that seems wrong to not be able to 
decode a well know ir signal (NEC).  Plus, it appears that this method 
doesn't properly decode the "repeated" button marker code.  Any 
suggestions for this?

So, my next thought is to try another receiver that's well used and 
tested among lirc folks, which seem to be: IguanaIR, IrToy, or 
GIR/arduino.

I'm tempted to buy something pre-made and run with it (ie: IguanaIR or 
IrToy) but the "open hardware/software" aspect of the arduino option is 
appealing.

The other option is to get all of them and see which one works best :)

Any suggestions on how to proceed?  What are other users having success 
with that works *really* well?  Do any of the above options have common 
pitfalls?

Thanks,

Wade

1. https://sourceforge.net/p/lirc/mailman/message/35037509/

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