Can you operate the cable box via the serial port?

[Keen]

Does SageTV let you control your cable box via the serial port rather than using an IR blaster? I'm currently using Beyond TV and the setup for BTV allowed easy configuration for setting up the serial port control.

[mayamaniac]

Not built-in support, for the Motorola cable box, use this MultiDCTTuner 1.2 plugin: http://sourceforge.net/projects/multidcttuner/

It works flawlessly on my Motorola DCT2224 cable box.

DirecTV serial control is natively supported in SageTV.

[matt91]

My recent searching suggests that getting a box with an active serial port is often the biggest hurdle. Since you've gotten that far already, seems that you should be OK. I've seen many posts by folks who use the multidcttuner and it works without fail.

Matt

[scavenge]

Originally Posted by matt91

My recent searching suggests that getting a box with an active serial port is often the biggest hurdle. Since you've gotten that far already, seems that you should be OK. I've seen many posts by folks who use the multidcttuner and it works without fail.

Matt

Very true, while you're at it be sure to get a box that has serial enabled and an s-vhs port (as long as your digitizing/tuner card has svhs in that is).

My set-up sued to be this way and it worked flawlessly.

[Keen]

Thanks for the help, haven't tried installing SageTV yet but when I do I'll use that plugin.

[PhillJones]

Do you know you can do it with the firewire port and exetuner? It's really simple and lots of people use this method.