@mbairhead,
It sounds like you and I have similar configurations in AV gear. I have a Wall-Mounted Plasma, along with a 1/2 Rack of AV gear in another room... and a long set of cables connecting it all together.
eg. HDMI, Ethernet, Subwoofer, Speakers and a Telephone connection (etc)
I use a [wired] Xantech to extend IR from the TV to the AV Rack, for any "control" that isn't normally covered by HDMI-CEC Pass-through. This boils down to my older AV stuff, like the AppleTV, Playstation & DirecTivo. The Onkyo accepts CEC Passthrough, so the TV "repeats" core IR functions over the HDMI connection. I have the Xantech, as my [older] PowerMid's were flakey...
Currently I have 2x Pucks, one drives the TV and the other drives the AV Rack. The TV Puck is tucked up behind the TV, and I use a standard IR Blaster cable (plugged into the Puck's 3.5mm jack) to come out the front and control the TV - so there's very little out front.
Technically, because of where I have the Xantech "Dinky Link" receiver, I could probably just get along with one Puck, but I wanted to test the general (2-Puck) config so I didn't do that.
For AV-Puck , I've stripped the casing off (Sorry Mat!), velcro'd it inside the Rack, and power it off of my DirecTivo's USB connection (very handy). I have a cheap ($2) splitter on the external Jack, as well as 2x External cables.
It's worked flawlessly for me.