[mythtv-users] MythTV and DISH - a great solution

[Dex West]

--- "Michael J. Sherman" <msherman at dsbox.com> wrote:

> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I've been using Myth for over a year and a half, and I use it with my 
> Dish network receiver.  

First off this is a great how-to document that I will save for my archives of Myth Emails.  Second
I must get something off my chest because I Read the replies to this email:  it annoys me when
people reply with completely different topics then the one you posted with.  Your not trying to
solve channel changing on a cable box or a DirectTV satellite box.  Dish Network creates a very
different set of issues because they don’t have the “best solution” for external channel changing.
 Just my opinion but I’d like to hear from people who actually use Dish Network receivers about
this topic..

> This forces me to use one of those external 
> channel-changing devices to transmit IR signals and get the box to 
> change channels.  First I bought an ActiSys, and that didn't work well 
> at all.  Then I made my own, and after fighting with lirc, it seemed 
> to work.  But it only worked most of the time.  One out of ten channel 
> changes it would just miss a digit. 

How did you attach your homebrew Transmitter?  I'm trying to same path with NO success getting
lirc to work or the homebrew transmitters so I will probably give up.  The reply about taping the
transmitter to the box seems like it would help?  How much time did you spend on changing the
lirc.conf file?

>  And I must say that not having 
> the confidence that what you want recorded is actually going to be 
> recorded somewhat takes away from the PVR experience.
> 
> So if any of you are in the situation I was in, read on.  I have 
> discovered the fool-proof way of integrating a Dish network box with 
> MythTV and I just want to get this written up so it'll live on in the 
> archives.  Big thanks go out to Bill Munson and his excellent Perl 
> scripts!  He's the man.
> 
> 1) Buy a MyBlaster IR transmitter.  I bought mine here:
> http://www.mytvstore.com/product_id_001.html
> It cost me $37.95 + shipping.  I bought the serial version.  It was 
> delivered in three days.

Has anyone tried the USB version?  The only problem is I'd like to control 2 dish network boxes so
would that require purchasing 2 Myblasters?  Have any solutions other then purchasing 2 blaster
boxes?  I'm also assuming that with the Myblaster you are not required to use Lirc??


> 
> 2) Grab Bill's Perl scripts.  Email him (search for his posts on this 
> lists for contact info), or you can download the exact zip he sent me 
> from my server here:
> http://stealthboy.com/MyBlaster14.zip
> 
> 3) Plug the MyBlaster into serial port 1 (COM1, aka ttyS0).  Hook up 
> its power supply, too.
> 
> 4) Install the Time::HiRes Perl package through the magic of CPAN.
> ("perl -MCPAN -e shell", then "install Time::HiRes").
> 
> 5) Unzip the MyBlaster14.zip file.   Edit the MyBlaster.pl file.  For 
> a Dish network box, leave the remote_code set at 775, and change the 
> Device_Type to 3 (for satellite).  Also change ttyS1 to ttyS0 if 
> you're using COM1 instead of the default COM2.  I also changed the 
> inter_key_delay to 0.1 instead of 1.0 second so it would switch 
> channels faster.
> 
> 6) Put the edited MyBlaster.pl in /usr/local/bin/, and make sure it is 
> executable (chmod +x MyBlaster.pl).
> 
> 7) Make a channel_change script that MythTV can use (and put this in 
> your setup where it asks for the external channel change command). 
> Make sure it's executable.  I suppose you could leave this out and 
> just use MyBlaster.pl as what Myth calls directly, but whatever.  For 
> testing and whatnot I liked the ability to leave the Myth setting the 
> same and just change this little script if I had to.
> 
>       #!/bin/sh
>       /usr/local/bin/MyBlaster.pl $1
> 
> To test it, just try running "channel_change 183" or some other 
> channel number.
> 
> 8) That's it!  No messing with lirc, no building your own transmitter 
> to work with the picky Dish box.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> Mike
> > _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> 



		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail