mine doesn't go further than a few centimeterssims said:Practically no laptops these days come wiht IR ports. It's even rarer then to see them outside the highend models. Bluetooth and Wifi are better and cheaper than IR solutions now.
As for your question, no there are no software for laptop to act as a TV remote controll, or none that I know of. I bet the reason is the range on Laptop IR ports aren't very far. I own a pda and have played around with the IR transfer. Couldn't get a few feet ,ie 3, before the signal is lost.