There is an IR Receiver Breakout board available from SparkFun Electronics, all you would have to do is hook it up to a digital in on the main controller and program in the stream of bits. It would make the process a lot easer.
Board:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/pro...ducts_id=8554#
I will post some example code later once I get mine setup.
Erica Young