USB-UIRT info needed

[SafetyBob]

I finally have my first digital cable box for the first time in many, many years from Cox Cable. I am getting all my ducks in line for hooking it up to my MCE-500 on the Sage server. My question is do I need to get the "special" USB-UIRT with the additional 56KHz IR sensor or will the regular one work.

Thanks,

Bob

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by SafetyBob

My question is do I need to get the "special" USB-UIRT with the additional 56KHz IR sensor or will the regular one work.

Most likely the regular one should work fine. Most remotes run on the regular one. I heard that therre are only a few that run at 56Khz, Dish remotes and a few others.

What are you using right now to control Sage? Because if you like it and don't want to switch/add more IR equipment to your rig, you may want to look into serial or firewire tuning of the STB. Serial/FIrewire tuning is just about 100% accurate.

edit: looking at you sig, running a ton of MVPs. Maybe running Sage Server headless so no IR setup on it now?

[SafetyBob]

You are exactly correct that I have no IR control of anything right now with my two MCE-500's. Oh, the "guys" at Cox incorrectly brought a non-firewire STB with them, however, I just want a somewhat easy IR setup that will be as foolproof as possible. I would imagine a Scientific America 4240C is about as generic a STB as there is, so I am hopeful I will not need anything extra other than the USB-UIRT.

I would appreciate your opinion and any tips.....

Bob

[SafetyBob]

Forgot to ask.....what exactly is serial tuning and the STB also has a IR input in the back, any idea what that is for or does? Yes, I need to go read the manual, glad I have to dig online to find it. Guess we are not the usual cable user....

Bob

[ke6guj]

Since you won't be using the USB-UIRT to receive IR from your remote, and will only be using it to IR blast, the standard version will be just fine. And that should be all that you need.

If you wanted to try firewire, I'd take the box back to Cox and exchange it, or pick one up as a second box to test. IF it didn't work for you then you could return it.

As for serial tuning, if your STB has a serial/COM port on the back, then you could run a serial cable from the PC to the STB and do tuning through it. As for the IR input port, no idea. Have heard others mention them, but don't know of any way to use it.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by SafetyBob

Forgot to ask.....what exactly is serial tuning and the STB also has a IR input in the back, any idea what that is for or does? Yes, I need to go read the manual, glad I have to dig online to find it. Guess we are not the usual cable user....

Bob

The IR input is to support plugging an IR Emitter into your cable box that would control a VCR. It's unlikely that you would want to do this since you are using Sage, but if you wanted to, you would need to contact your Cable provider to see if it actually works and to get the proper emitter. Chances are it isn't even enabled.

[SafetyBob]

Thanks so much for the great info. Will get the standard USB-UIRT. And I think I will get another box. The digital cable really looks good on my Sharp LCD HDTV.

Bob