Thanks for the info. I don't think I'll be able to use your work around MrHaugen, as my HTPC serves double duty as my media server computer, so even if I were to get a fancier remote and automate as mentioned I would have times when the computer would be woken when connecting from clients. I do most of my music listening from another machine, so this would be fairly common.
My setup is currently the onboard graphics from a S.B. i3 going HDMI to a Denon 1712 AVR, then HDMI to a Samsung LCD TV (circa 2009-ish). Could there be any handshake problems arising from the order in which I turn on my AVR and TV? The thing that makes me wonder about this is that there was definitely a period of time where I did not see this issue at all, plus a brief respite of a week or so after it first began. I'll test this out when I get home tonight.
It would definitely be nice to have MC check for this though, as having a set process to follow to start watching TV is not ideal (nor is buying a $150 remote). When I want to watch the tube, I don't want to have to think at all