Media center remote issue
I am having an issue with my Windows 7 Media Center and iTunes. First let me give you some background info.
I am using Windows 7 Media Center for my living room TV DVR and I am using a RC6 IR remote to control MCE which basically acts by sending keyboard commands. However I really did not like how it handles music as I got hooked on Genius (WMCE is stuck in the past with hand built playlists, yawn.) So I installed iTunes to have it running in the background and use my iOS devices to control it. This works great and iTunes does not bring it self to the foreground so my MCE stays on the screen. However during one of the last upgrades to iTunes I noticed a new behavior that is causing me grief. Once iTunes plays a song it captures and keeps control of the keyboard shortcuts used to control iTunes (skip, stop, etc) and MCE does not respond to those same commands. So if I have iTunes play a song then stop the song and watch a recorded show I can't skip forward or even stop playback. If I close iTunes or even open the iTunes store then the remote works again with MCE. However it is a pain to have to minimize MCE to fix iTunes so the remote works again. Every time a song is played through iTunes it will go back to this behavior and I have to fix it again.
My question is can I disable any or all of the keyboard shortcuts in iTunes? After all I only use iOS devices to control music playback and not the IR remote or a keyboard so I don't need that feature.
If anybody has another solution I can try (like can I change the keyboard shortcuts for skip and stop in iTunes or MCE) please let me know and I will give it a try.
Windows 7