How many people are happy with the USBUIRT option?

[pat_smith1969]

I am in the painful process of switching from Comcast to Verizion FIOS (saving $50 a month). I used to use firewire to change channels but now much use a USBUIRT to do so.

I have it all setup and working, but am paranoid I will get errant channel changes when things are scheduled to record. Testing showed that it is receiving the signals well, with no IR leakage from the other STBs. ANd it LOOKS like it will be fairly reliable.

What has me worried is that in testing, the first time I tell it to change a channel it sends out a bunch of garbage numbers, then goes to the channel. During testing it failed to go to the correct channel a few times because of this.


I have a PIQ 2500-3 (two of those) and one PIQ 7100-1 from Verizion FIOS (Moto boxes). Are "you all" working fine with the USB UIRT?

[gplasky]

I have mine working on my WHS for a single Comcast cable box. I had maybe 3 missed or wrong channel changes over the past year. That's 16 favorites using that USB-UIRT so at the very least 64 recordings per month or 672 per year. Actually more since Law and Orders and CSIs could record every day.

Gerry

[steven017]

I've been using mine for about a year without any real trouble. My setup is a bit complicated, so setting it up was a pain, but since then it's been great. I've got mine a few centimeters away from my STB though, so it's unlikely it would miss. I'd imagine if you moved it farther away, you could have some trouble.

One way that you could end up with trouble is if you are pressing keys on your remote while the USB-UIRT is transmitting. I learned this at the very beginning when I set mine up. In this case, your STB could miss a code. This has happened to me. Using a separate receiver and shielding your USB-UIRT from receiving IR codes would probably prevent that, although I haven't tried it.

My 3 year old playing with the STB and power outages have been the only real problems I've had.

[pat_smith1969]

All my STBs are in the basement where no other remote control action happens (it's an unfinished basement). I built a fairly cool IR fort out of cardboard and tape.

The extraneous digits that were being pushed out before the channel number I think was because some of my channels had "alternate" physical channel numbers to them. i.e. 10 WNUV [134-1005-867]. I cleared all of those out by hand and everything SEEMS to be working well so far.


It is good to hear that some people are having a high rate of accuracy with these. I would say that 6 errors in over 1k channel changes is a REALLY good rate.

[vexhold]

I only use the USB-UIRT to have my RF reciever for my remote talk to the server.

The server changes channels via Firewire after that.

It all works beyond expectations and was fairly simple to install.

The Harmony remote comes with little caps that cover the IR buds and also sticks them onto the device being controlled. These work very well in getting a good connection. I exchanged my remote at Best Buy and kept the covers and ir buds from the forst one so now I have extras in case they ever go bad..lol.

[btrcp2000]

I had one up and running for a while, but it barfed about three weeks ago, and I have been trying everything I can think of. Last idea I have is re-routing the cables, as apparently it is sensitive to just about anything too close to it, video, power, etc. Great when it worked, but it's a few days from the garbage can now.

[IVB]

I actually own a Patersontech.com serial cable for my DirecTV HD box, but due to shipping delays I got it a week after setting everything up using a USBUIRT to tune. Given that it works fine, i'm torn about letting a perfectly good serial cable just sit there unused given that I could use the UIRT elsewhere.

But for the last (6? 9?) months, i've been content to let stable, sleeping dogs lie, and stick with the USBUIRT. Maybe one of these days i'll do something stupid like mess with stability, but that time hasn't yet come.

[CollinR]

I setup my dads 5-6 years ago and no troubles that I know of.

I have had one for a couple years too but mine doesn't do any channel changing just controlling periferial devices.

[dadof4]

Controlling two TW cable boxes (SA4250HD) with no problems. I took the IR blasters that came with my PVR150 and PVR1600 and spliced them into a stereo mini jack which plugs into the UIRT. Taped them to the cable boxes with duct tape (it fixes anything!) and covered the UIRT's main blaster with electrical tape. I have had no problems using it for about three months.

[jm987]

I have mix feelings about it. I've been using mine for about a year now and I don't have any issues with it at the moment besides that I find channel changing extremely slow.

Maybe their is something I can do about that but when I was playing with usbuirt timings I found it to be unreliable if I made the values to quick.

I use it for 2 HD boxes. one of them uses the back connection and has a IR blaster taped to the front of the box and the other one has it about 2 inches away from the box. I've only had it fail on me a few times but probably because someone or some animal knocked it out of the way.

JM

[stanger89]

I don't think mine's ever missed a tune in the past 2-3 years I've been running it.

[Apap]

I have mine controlling 3 Directv STBs and it has been working fine for years. The only problem I had was with a Streamzap remote receiver sometimes conflicting with the UIRT. The Streamzap is now retired and no more conflicts.

[paulbeers]

Been using mine with 2 Dish 311's and 1 Dish VIP211 and haven't missed a tune yet. If given the option, I would probably use serial or Firewire but since I didn't have a choice with Dish.....Anyway, yes the tuning is probably slower than other devices (don't have any so I can't compare), but it is certainly fast enough for my needs. I pad all favorites with an extra minute so I never see the channel change at the beginning of the recording.

[waynedunham]

I've been using a USBUIRT for several months and it is working flawlessly now. I did have to cut back on the default settings for how long between sending IR codes (i.e. the individual digits for the channels). Sometimes it would tune the channel before all the digits had been sent.
Shortening the length between ir codes fixed that and I haven't missed a channel change since.

[mpcrider]

I have the same PIC2500 as PatSmith1969 does, and have been using the USBUIRT for a couple of years.

The problem I have is that I'm frequently plugging in USB/Flash drives into my PC (I move video files around with them). Sometimes, especially if I've plugged 2 or more in at the same time, it'll knock my USBUIRT out, so that it doesn't send the channel change commands. It still is powered, as mine flashes a red LED when it picks up IR signals.

To get it working again I need to uninstall it from the Device Manager, then reboot the PC. I've always found it that it's not working when it fails to change the channel on something I wanted to record (I don't watch much live TV).

This is a Windows problem, and I'm running XP SP3. My PC is a Sony Viao with (as I recall) 4 USB slots in the front and 5 around back. I also have my wireless KB/Mouse plugged into the back, and I plug the flash drives into the front.

I'd be much obliged if anyone has a solution to this.

[AJ Bertelson]

5 years for me and never had a problem that I can remember.

[IVB]

not to be a smartass, but stop using your server as a regular PC, use a different PC to move those files.

I don't touch my Sage/CQC/database server at all, which is part of the reason it's as stable as it is. I use a cheap POS PC to do my CD/DVD ripping, then use the network to move the files over.

[Striker:WG]

I currently use the MCE IR Receiver/Blaster and HIP to do my channel changing.

Its fairly reliable, but certainly not as good as 6 misses in 1k. I also have an issue if two scheduled programs are at the same time then only one channel change will successfully happen. I believe that HIP or HipWSend is dropping one of the two requests that Sage sends and then only one channel is tuned resulting in a missed recording on the other STB.

Since the UIRT is controlled directly within Sage and does not require extra software like HIP is this a non issue for UIRT users?

If that is the case, can I continue to use my Microsoft MCE remote with the UIRT receiver to help maintain the WAF?

-Striker-

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

Since the UIRT is controlled directly within Sage and does not require extra software like HIP is this a non issue for UIRT users?

If that is the case, can I continue to use my Microsoft MCE remote with the UIRT receiver to help maintain the WAF?

-Striker-

Question #1
Yes for me, USBUIRT has three zones, and can change all three at the same time with no issues.

Question #2
Yes, I use my MCE remote to control a PC with my MCE remote using the USBUIRT.

[ace007]

I still can't mine to work as both a blaster and a receiver with Sage in Service mode. Been working with support to try and figure it out but its a very slow process.