Hey William1,

I have a pretty similar issue. I have a Pioneer TV mounted on my living room wall, and everything else (including a Rotel receiver) in a rack hidden away.

I was looking at different controllers (RTI, Control4, etc) but wanted to try to do everything on my own instead of paying an installer.

After exploring a couple different options, I also settled on iRule. iRule can control some devices over TCP/IP, you just have to add a network gateway in the iRule app.

iRule DOES do IR blasting, but you have to buy an IP2IR from Global Cache and add it as a gateway. hope this helps!

One thing I did notice with iRule: I'm using iRule on a Nexus 7 but I also added it onto my wife's iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 connects to the gateways immediately, while the Nexus 7 taxes a second or so. Not sure if this is a specific hardware issue, but iRule does seem designed around Apple products first.