I gave up waiting for possible DVB-S support in MC and grabbed DVBViewer to handle TV in my HTPC.
What is really strange is that MC and DVBV "share" the remote that was bundled with my Hauppauge HVR-4000 tuner card. When I say share, I mean the two apps seem to have divided up the buttons between them so that each of the buttons runs in one app only.
For example, the play, stop and pause buttons don't do anything in DVBV but work perfectly in MC although I didn't do anything to associate MC with the Hauppauge remote driver commands. On the other hand, if I'm in MC and then press TV on the remote, it happily opens DVBV viewer, where other buttons which don't work in MC, like Menu for example, work fine.
Is it possible that MC has somehow grabbed the necessary remote buttons for itself exclusively and that's why they don't work in DVBV even if MC isn't running ?!?