John clued me into the NRC17 / $00BD issues yesterday, so hopefully I will be able to offer some opinions soon. I do have a suggestion for situations where the OFA site offers many different codes for one device and you have no idea which is the right one.

You could download a WAV file from the OFA site (for any European remote with the same processor), convert it into an IR file, then do a quick bit of cut&paste work to convert that IR file into the one for your remote. Obviously, the buttons are all going to be messed up, but the main buttons (ie, numbers, ch+/-, vol+/- and power) should still line up correctly. Then, you could convert this new IR file into a WAV file for the user to test. Once he has determined which setup code matches his device (even though the buttons are messed up), you'll know which code to concentrate on.