The remote buttons are read through the ADC (analog-to-digital convertor). When a button is pressed, it changes the value read by the ADC. As far as I know, it only works in one direction, but even if it wasn't, I think it would be near impossible to get an external usb host controller working. Besides, there is already a host controller built into the PP5020 chip inside so it would be much easier to make use of that.