Channel Changing options for STBs

[yacht_boy]

Howdy all-

Back in January, I got everything dialed in to turn my PC into a DVR. I had it all working fine in GBPVR and Sage (trial version), and was trying to figure out whether or not the nicer Sage interface was worth the money, when my IR blaster for my Hauppauge 150 stopped working.

It had already been flaky, mostly skipping a digit so that I was forever recording the wrong channel, but then it just quit. After months of back-and-forth with Hauppauge, they finally sent me a new (refurbished?) capture card and new IR blaster.

Then some life stuff got in the way so I never got the chance to try it out again, until now. I'm in a new apartment with a new cable box (Motorola DCT700 for comcrap) and I can't get the IR blaster to make the thing work to save my life.

I see that there's some ludicrously expensive R5000 thing out there which will let me capture digital signals and change the channel, but as of now the R5000 website is down. I remember that it used to be possible to find a motorola with a serial output and beg comcast to let you use that to change channels, but that was always a dodgy bet at best. I've heard rumors that there are STB's with a firewire connection that will allow for channel changing, but have no concrete evidence that this will actually work.

I don't have a ton of money to blow, but I want this to work. This IR blaster thing is obviously useless. What's my next best bet? How do I get Sage (or any other app) to control the STB with the fewest headaches for the lowest dollar amount?

Thanks,

Jason

[Fluffdaddy]

The USB-UIRT is the channel changer of choice now dayz

http://www.usbuirt.com/

http://store.sagetv.com/Merchant2/me...tegory_Code=HD

[yacht_boy]

Hmmm. I already have the IR blaster that came with my Hauppauge 150. That thing's been nothing but trouble. Is this going to be significantly better? I'm not sure I understand why this would work but the one I have won't.

[ke6guj]

I used the IR blaster off my PVR-150 for a bit, but got less than acceptable channel changing acruacy. I was gonna go with the USB-UIRT, but went with firewire channel changing on my STB, and got firewire tuning in addition. Firewire tuning does work, if you get a firewire-equipped (and enabled) STB. The cable company is supposed to supply you with a firewired STB for the asking. My CC only had HD STBs with firewire, no SD STB had it.

[othy]

I have a usb-uirt but I've never used it for channel changing. I went with firewire for channel changing only, since I am not able to capture video from the STB via firewire (encryption issue I think, though it's been a while since I tried).

For channel changing, it's been perfect. Never any issues at all.

See this thead for information:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14413

Tim

[yacht_boy]

Hmm, that looks more promising. My roommate's been talking about getting an HDTV anyway, so getting an HD box with Firewire would work. Any advice on what model number I should ask Comcast for?

[ke6guj]

What I just did was to go to the CC office and tell them I wanted a firewire (IEEE1394) box. They pulled out a SD box and it didn't have one. Then they pulled out a DVR, and it had one. So I said, I want a non-DVR box that has that port on it. THey looked a bit more and pulled out a Motorola DCT6200 HD box that had one, and I was set.

[othy]

Originally Posted by yacht_boy

Hmm, that looks more promising. My roommate's been talking about getting an HDTV anyway, so getting an HD box with Firewire would work. Any advice on what model number I should ask Comcast for?

I didn't have a choice, since my cable company only offers SA boxes. But before I did anything, I checked the cable co. web site's tech support area and was able to find out the exact models they used, then came on this site and verified I'd be able to tune via firewire.

Check Comcast's site to see if they identify the box(es) they use.

Tim