I don't like Apple's Front Row. I prefer XBMC.

To disable the auto startup of Front Row when you press the menu key of your Apple Remote the clean way you should prevent it from running in launchd. By typing launchctl list you'll get the list of the processes associated. In the list there is an com.apple.RemoteUI entry. As this is what starts up Front Row we don't want to have it started any more.

You could try to do launchd unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist like the launchctl(1) advises but a normal user has no permissions on this file. Using sudo will also not help as com.apple.RemoteUI runs in the user-launchd and not the root-launchd.

Just edit the file using sudo vi /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist and add the following in the root <dict>:

<key>Disabled</key>
<true/>

I tried to edit the .plist file to make the menu button start up XBMC. It works partially, but when you quit XBMC it will open again...more research later...