WinAmp IRemote was developed for working with any IR port that can act as a serial port, eg COM 2 on my Laptop. It will also work with an ordinary serial port, although the usefullness of this is less obvious. When used with an IR port any TV, video, HiFi, or any other Infra-Red controller can be used to control playback through WinAmp by holding down any button on the controller (whilst pointed at the IR port, obviously) for varying lengths of time, depending on the function required.

The functions available are Previous Track, Play, Pause, Stop and Next Track (the 5 main WinAmp buttons). These can each be assigned a different length of time that the button must be held down, measured in "Ticks". The length of a tick can also be specified, in milliseconds.

After each tick the program will optionally make a beep or click with the PC speaker (so as not to be overidden by WinAmps output), and optionally display onscreen a popup with the current function. When the correct number of ticks have passed (or the correct function is displayed in the popup, release the button, and that function will be executed).