[mythtv] Controlling Digital Cable Boxes (was: Good Inexpensive capture card?)

Jeremy Oddo mythtv-dev@snowman.net
Wed, 23 Oct 2002 16:30:54 -0700 (PDT)


> On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 03:15:51PM -0700, Jeremy Oddo wrote:
>> Damn!  Well, at least I didn't spend too much time on it!  American
>> companies piss me off.  Why can't they settle on a standard?  Two
>> reasons:
>>  ego and money.  Grrrr.
>>
>> Thanks for all your help, thought.
>
> I'm pretty sure that channels under 100 even for digital cable are
> broadcast analog. There's a really easy way to test this assuming you
> have a cable ready tv- hook up your tv directly to the cable connection
> out of the wall bypassing your digital cable box. Any channels that you
> can see on your tv you'll be able to see on mythtv. You'll definitely be
> able to see nbc, abc, cbs etc...
>
Yeah, I know for a fact that I can get channels under 61 (because one of
my TVs is hooked up without a digibox).  The bad news is that all the
movie channels, The Science Channel, and worst of all TechTV are all in
the 62+ range.

> There are also hooks built into the mythtv for changing the channel
> using an external program. I don't believe anyone's actually implemented
> it yet, but if you have the hardware (check out lirc.org for more info)
> it looks pretty easy to do if you're at all comfortable hacking c.
>
Yeah, David Hunnisett hinted at this.  I'm wishing that the mythtv docs
weren't as spotty as they are (I know that this project is a HUGE
undertaking and I'm glad people are doing it...I just wish the info was
easier to get to!).  Reading some of the change log (5/30/2002): "Modified
things to work with the remote a little better, and added some example
lirc config files to CVS".  So I guess the lirc stuff is making it's way
in, but I don't know how fully it's implemented.

And here's something else I dug up from someone's blog:

"I want to mention that over the weekend I was able to do something that I
think is very cool... using XMLTV, mythepg (part of the MythTV package),
and a bit of hacking, I was able to get a working on screen programming
guide for my Linux machine when watching TV on it, and it's LIRC enabled,
which means I can sit back, call up the program guide, surf around to find
something to watch, press a button and it changes the TV channel to that
program. Very sweet."

I guess I should look more closely at the LIRC stuff, huh?


Thanks for all the info,
Jeremy