Change channels on DirecTV STB via ethernet

[Eckwell]

Got it working in NO time! Thanks for everyones work on this! I was using serialUSB connections but they kept failing because windows keep droping the USB connection and reconnecting to a different com port. this works so much better.

THanks!

UPDATE: Both DirecTv receivers now updated to HTTP Tuning working GREAT.

[woribhabor]

I agree that this is great!! The original instructions need to be edited to show that you need to go back to source after adding HTTP control and select the IP address.

Otherwise this is great!

[mr_lore]

Ericvic, This is epic!!!! Many thanks!

[mr_lore]

Damn, spoke to soon seems I cant tune '-' dash channels for certain local sports. I see that btrumsey's batch file has some rem'd out lines to handle dashes but I tried sending the request via command line and dtvtune.exe and I get the same result as the alternate method '403 forbidden'.

Anybody else in the same boat get dashes to work?

[jchiso]

Originally Posted by mr_lore

... Anybody else in the same boat get dashes to work?

You could probably adapt the batch file I created and described here ...

[rstone]

Has anyone got this to work with the new beta 7.1.2? I had it working before I installed the beta, but now nothing. I tried both Directv HTTP Tuning and EXEMultiTunerPlugin, but neither works now.

[mr_lore]

I'm running the beta with Ericvic's method from page 2 of this thread, went from 7.x to 7.1 without a hitch. I've tried the exemultituner plugin method but never had good results.

[jphipps]

I am running 7.1.2 using the EXEMultiTunerPlugin with no issues...

Was a bit tricky on mine because of using 64bit Win7 and getting all the other files in the correct sub-directories..

Thanks,
Jeff

[rjudge]

Thanks Eric for the work. I just got my HD-PVR yesterday and after a little wiring and a putting a GB switch in the video room, it's working. Funny, the DirecTV installation person put in a little black box that has an ethernet RJ45 connection and two RJ6 video connections. This hooks into a RJ6 splitter that connects to the dish and to the tuners. The tuners have a ethernet RJ45 also, but they are not connected. The tuners both see the network and the internet fine. I assume this box feeds the network through the video cable somehow. The installer said I'd have to have this box to get on demand video from the Internet. Is there anyone else out there with this setup?

A couple of questions. I know that when SageTV tries to change the channel it sends a power on command before the change. Does this mean that the tuner will stay powered on from then on or is there a power off command issued after a program is recorded?

Also, I have the commercial skip plugin installed. The shows I recorded with the HD-PVR do not have the commercials marked. I'm not sure if this is restricted to the HD-PVR or if it is also not working on my 2250 that is hooked to cable. Is there something different about the files from the HD-PVR that fouls up Commercial skip? Sorry for the off topic Q.

Thanks again!

Rick

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by rjudge

A couple of questions. I know that when SageTV tries to change the channel it sends a power on command before the change. Does this mean that the tuner will stay powered on from then on or is there a power off command issued after a program is recorded?

Sage doesn't by default send anything other than the numbers for tuning the box. It certainly doesn't send any soft of an off command. Not much need to do so, since most STBs use the same amount of power whether they are ON or OFF.

[bikesquid]

Originally Posted by Ericvic

Attached is my attempt at a DLL that does HTTP tuning for DirecTV boxes. Like I said before I have only tested it on H24 boxes and Server 2003.

To use the tuner just unzip the file in the SageTV\Common directory. It will add the following files/directories:
SageTV\Common\DirecTVTuner.dll
SageTV\Common\RemoteCodes\Directv HTTP Tuning
SageTV\Common\RemoteCodes\Directv HTTP Tuning\192.168.211.60.ir

You will need to change the name of the 192.168.211.60.ir file to the IP address of your DirecTV box. The IP address also needs to be entered inside the file. If you have more than one box then you can copy the file and change the name to appropriate IP address.

You will then need to restart Sage to get it to recognize the DLL.

If you use it please let me know how it works for you.

Eric

THANK YOU!!!! I've been having trouble ever since having to rebuild the sage-box to get the serial connections that worked fine before to work again... for days... without luck. This is so simple, so easy to setup and so easy to see if there's a problem, way better than the hunt and peck serial setup trouble-shooting. BTW I'm on the 7.1.2 beta on a windows 7 x64 machine. No regedits, no complicated anything. Only thing I'd add to the instructions is you need to go into the video sources setup and select the device and select the Tuner Control item to pair the ip to the device...

Damn I love simple solutions that just work!

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I'm still using serial channel changing without any issues, but this brought something to mind. Can this be used to send a command to reboot (red button) the receiver? I do this about once a week, so that I don't get the customer service message on my recordings. I believe the message pops up because I don't have a phone line connected. It's really annoying when I forget to reboot the STB and I get a couple days of useless recordings.

Past three years on serial channel changing NEVER had to reboot for this reason and NEVER got any messages. I do not have the phone line connected and I didn't tell DTV anything.

I know some of the older receivers, Tivo based, had this issue. They needed to "Checkin" to validate the Tivo sub. I miss those receivers

-Skybolt

[Skirge01]

Thanks to those who responded. I've since hooked up my STBs to the internet and have not had the message since. I wish it wasn't necessary, but I can live with this solution.

[chums]

I was an hour away from ordering the usb-serial cables to hook up my H24, when on a unrelated google search I saw this thread. I changed the channels with my browser and it worked well. I thought Ericvic was a more elegant solution and had nothing to lose. Had problems at first but found if I put the ".ir" file with the Remotecodes directory it worked like a charm.
SageTV\Common\RemoteCodes\Directv HTTP Tuning
SageTV\Common\RemoteCodes\192.168.1.5.ir
Then I went to Setup>Setup Video Sources>1.Haup...Milwaukee>Tuner Control: DirecTV HTTP Tuning> Tuning Device, and selected my IP for the H24.
Hope this helps someone and thanx again to btrumsey and Ericvic.

[djg]

Eric,

Thanks for posting your dll and instructions. This is fabulous, I got it working in just a few minutes. I have both an H21 and HR21 hooked to Colossus capture cards. I have recently had trouble with a Paterson serial tuning device on the HR21 I have been unable to resolve. Your dll seems to tune much faster, at least it feels that way.

Dave

[mr_lore]

I did try again to get exemultituner to work, and I did get it to tune channels succesfully, however when I mapped my channel from 669-1 to physical 6691 and sent it to my edited bat file I always got internal server error 500?

echo off
cls
rem Created Jan 10 2011
rem This batch file uses the dtvTune executable to change channels on DTV
rem STBs via the ethernet connection.
rem
rem This batchfile and the dtvTune.exe file go into the SageTV directory
rem
rem You also need to add the following registry key (as a string type) to
rem HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin
rem "command"="DirecTVMultiChg.bat %DEVICE% %CHANNEL%"
rem
rem In the script below, the %1 represents the tuner device (%DEVICE%) name
rem passed from SageTV. The %2 represents the channel (%CHANNEL%) value passed
rem from SageTV.
rem Both values used as arguments to the executable batch file

rem Each device must be assigned to an IP address
set CURDEVICE=%1
IF %CURDEVICE% EQU DTV2 set USEIP=192.168.1.101
IF %CURDEVICE% EQU DTV1 set USEIP=192.168.1.100
IF %CURDEVICE% EQU DSS3 set USEIP=192.168.0.202
IF %CURDEVICE% EQU DSS4 set USEIP=192.168.0.203
IF %CURDEVICE% EQU DSS5 set USEIP=192.168.0.204

rem Convert channel designations to tuning commands
set CHANRAW=%2
rem It is unclear at this point if we need to support dashed channels. Even
rem if we did, it should probably be added to the dtvTune executable and not
rem here...
rem Keeping this code around just in case
set DASHCHECK=%CHANRAW:~-2%
set ISDASHED=%DASHCHECK:~0,1%
IF %ISDASHED% EQU - goto adddash
set CHANPRE=N/A
set CHANPRERAW=N/A
set CHANSUB=N/A
set USECHANNEL=%CHANRAW%
goto dotuning

:adddash
set CHANSUB=%CHANRAW:~-1%
set CHANPRERAW=%CHANRAW:~0,3%
set CHANPRE=%CHANPRERAW%
rem Pad zeroes for "dash" channels, where applicable
IF %CHANPRERAW:~1,1% EQU - set CHANPRE=00%CHANPRERAW:~0,1%
IF %CHANPRERAW:~-1% EQU - set CHANPRE=0%CHANPRERAW:~0,2%
set USECHANNEL=%CHANPRE%dash%CHANSUB%

:dotuning
dtvTune.exe -channel %CHANRAW% -ip %USEIP%




On to my fix



OK so I very much appreciate Eric's method (HTTP Tuning) very reliable over the last month or so, however as I mentioned above it doesnt allow me to tune dash ie 669-1 channels and now that the baseball season is nearing I need that ONE (ofcourse) channel to get some baseball in HD.

My fix (hack):

Put a url shortcut on my phone and ipad for the following:

http://192.168.1.101:8080/tv/tune?major=669&minor=1

This tunes the 669-1 channel regardless of what I'm watching, and since I never watch anything live except sports this works for me as kind of a second 'special' remote.


Eric any chance you could toss that &minor=x code in your DLL?

[heffneil]

I am using Eric's method. Starting from the beginning of this thread is very confusing as I originally started installing the EXEMulti version but then went for the HTTP version from Eric. We should probably close these threads and republish separately to minimize confusion but I am usually to impatient to read the entire thing.

Anyway I can't get Eric's method to work. I remove the tuner - readded it and selected the DirecTV HTTP tuning method but it didn't work. Any ideas of what to check?

Thanks so much!

Neil

[heffneil]

Just confirmed that I can tune the box properly with the correct link. I must have screwed something else up. I am running windows 2003 which I believe is what eric was originally running.

[heffneil]

Ok I got it I went back in and forgive me I think someone else did this too and selected the IP address of the device since I have two boxes. Awesome!

[ldw58]

re: the HTTP method... This works fantastically! I've finally been able to have at least a little confidence in the solution (have relied on USB-UIRT up to now but always needed to check each recording to verify that it was, in fact, what I intended to record).

Workaround I had to do:

1. re-locate the <ipaddress>.ir file to the RemoteCodes directory.
2. Delete the HD-PVR source and then re-add it. I'm sure that had I done the .properties tweaking it would've worked but this was, considering I had a deadline of 40 minutes before I had four back-to-back shows start recording, the quickest & most reliable. I had to re-select the channels I was using but for it was a reasonable trade-off. I found that just going into sources and selecting the IP setting wasn't enough because the system still thought that it was just a subset .IR file of the USB-UIRT device.

Very grateful that this works.