Trying to Understand the Paterson TV Translator with Sage

[Ron]

I've had Sage working with my Paterson TV Translator, my HDPVR and the DirecTV HR21 for several months. Every once and a while, the TV Translator will stop changing channels. When that happens, the usual steps and diagnostics I do are to:

• Reset the HR21 by either the red reset button or pulling the power. Sometimes, both.
• Reboot the computer (Vista 64 bit).
• Run the TV Translator Utility to be sure that it shows that the correct COM port is connected.
• Run the DirecTV Serial Control Utility to make sure that I can at least power the HR21 off and on.

Over the past few days I have had no luck getting the HR21 to respond to channel change commands through Sage. I have the DirecTV Channel Change Mode in Sage set to Fast. I even went so far as to remove the source and then add it back in again.

This morning I noticed that my computer rebooted after installing Microsoft updates. I went into Sage and voila, channel changing was properly working again.

I just do not understand why, all of a sudden, this particular computer reboot caused the channel changing to properly work. I had done several computer reboots, previously, and was not able to get it to work. So what I'm trying to understand is, are there certain steps in a precise order that will allow the TV translator and Sage to play nice with each other, or is it just a finnicky device that is hit and miss.

Anyone have any insight into this?

[MitchSchaft]

Computers are weird like that. Nobody knows.

[jchiso]

All I can say is that it's probably more of an issue with DirecTV and updates to the set-top box than it's the Paterson device. In recent weeks I've had several problems with controlling the boxes following updates from DirecTV, whether by USB port or via infrared...

[Ron]

Originally Posted by jchiso

All I can say is that it's probably more of an issue with DirecTV and updates to the set-top box than it's the Paterson device. In recent weeks I've had several problems with controlling the boxes following updates from DirecTV, whether by USB port or via infrared...

Then why would the Direct TV Serial Control Utility have no problem powering the STB on and off? I didn't try to see if any of the other commands work, but assumed that if the power on and off addressed the STB via the USB port, that the Sage tuner commands would work too. Maybe it was a bad assumption.