[mythtv-users] How do I turn my cable box on and off?

[Nick Morrott]

On 23/02/07, David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:
> So I just got my first Myth setup pretty much working on my FC6 box with
> a PVR-350.  In my city, I have to use my cable box to change channels.
> No problem, I have an IR blaster working with Myth as of tonight.  Cool
> beans.
>
> Working out the logistics of this, it occurred to me that I have to get
> the cable box to turn on and off.  In all the "Sure, you can use a cable
> box with Myth!" pages, it doesn't cover how to do that.  Obviously I use
> the IR blaster, but how do I configure the software so it knows to turn
> the cable box on if it's off, but not if it's already on, when starting
> to record, and turns it off (but not if there's another show to record
> afterwards) when stopping recording?

One way is to configure LIRC so that your lircd.conf file contains a
valid entry for your cable box remote's power button which works with
the IR blaster.

Configure your channel change script to first turn on your cable box,
wait a suitable length of time (seconds?) for the box to become
operational, then transmit the channel number to change to the correct
channel. If your box takes a significant time to become operational,
you should make use of the global pre-roll settings so that the
scheduler is made aware of this extra time requirement.

I don''t know of a way to execute a command after a recording has
finished however - perhaps you could poll mythbackend to see if it is
recording and then execute another script to issue the power signal to
turn off the signal once more.


> I would hate to have to leave the cable box on.

My cable boxes (ntl, Samsung, UK) have a standby mode, but this does
nothing except blank the output to the TV. No noticeable reduction in
power consumption. How useful. The 'actual' useful bit here is that as
there is no reduction in power consumption, there is no incentive in
turning off the box, so I avoid all this palaver.

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