How difficult would it be to 'capture' all incoming serial bytes from the Serial port and then provide the ability to remap them to IR or whatever commands?

The problem with the current serial interface to the player software is that the currently known serial commands don't implement all the newer features [like hush] which the IR interface does - ocne you know the 'codes' you can add this code to the map and this to the serial port interface.

Being able to map incoming character X to command Y would mean that we wouldn't have to hard code them in the kernel and it would mean that I could have different serial commands from you that suit my devices better.
Some of the current serial commands are not that obvious as to their meaning and the set hasn't been extended since the mark 1 days AFAIK.

Of course the Serial 'remap' process should be optional - if I want a userland to be able to deal with the serial port directly then this translation should be disabled.

[this is similar to the concept behind the *notify=1 options in config.ini].