[mythtv-users] detecting live video within mythtv?

[Adam Hirsch]

Our satellite box will occasionally stop producing video and sit at a black
screen for hours, annoying my wife to no end when her recordings don't
work.  The fix is to power-cycle the satellite box, which I could pretty
easily script the machine running mythtv to do.  (i.e. use the IR blaster
to send "power-off" and "power-on" codes.)

Question is, is there any way from within mythtv to tell whether or not the
satellite box is currently sending video?  I'd rather not cycle the box if
we don't have to.  

I was thinking that maybe I could do a quick test capture 

cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg 

for a set number of seconds, and then look to see how big the resulting
file is.  (presuming an mpg captured this way would vary its size based on
complexity and content.)

Is there any slicker way to do this test?

Adam

-- 
Love with your mouth shut,                                      <adam at baz.org>
help without breaking your ass or publicizing it;                <adam hirsch>
keep cool, but care.  -- Thomas Pynchon            <http://web.baz.org/~adam/>