Infra red circuit ?

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I wish to build a simple circuit to detect infra red emissions. The circuit should be as simple as possible (as a start point to add to). Was going to rip out a TV IR receiver and work with that, but are there even more practical ways of doing this ? The circuit should be able to detect any remote control or other emissions and so should not need a tuning method. I believe there are a couple of standards that these devices work to...is there a logic '1' to switch on all recieving within the chips they use...can that be pulled high by soldering a couple of legs ? Is one circuit simply something like taking a TV sensor and putting an LED to it ? lol