[mythtv-users] Best STB channel changing, IR blaster?

[Rod Smith]

On 08/13/2010 02:51 PM, Chris Finley wrote:
> What is the easiest/most reliable method for changing channels on a
> set-top box? Is it still using IR Blaster? I have read the wikipages,
> but the dates on them are pretty old.
> 
> I have Comcast, Hauppauge PVR 500, pcHDTV 5500 and a Motorola STB
> DCH70/2081 - standard definition, but I plan to get a HD capable one soon.
> I don't have an external serial port. Do the USB blasters work well?

I don't know about IR blasters with MythTV, but when I had a standalone
TiVo some years ago, I found the IR blaster to be about 95-98% reliable.
That sounds pretty good until you consider that it means it'll mis-tune
1 in 20 to 1 in 50 recordings. This could be perhaps one episode per
season of a TV show. If that show is important to you and repeats don't
happen, or if you don't notice the problem until after the repeats have
happened, that's very poor performance.

Currently, I'm using FireWire to change channels on my HD cable box (a
Motorola DCX3200-M). I also get a lot of my programming over FireWire,
but some I get via clear QAM on an AverMedia AverTV A180, and some
channels (which are scrambled even on the cable box's FireWire output) I
get via analog inputs to a Hauppauge PVR-500. If my cable company (Cox)
scrambled more HD content, I'd probably invest in a Hauppauge HD-PVR,
but at the moment I'm one of the lucky ones who can get most HD content
via FireWire. (My premium channels are scrambled via FireWire, but
that's about it.) In any event, I find FireWire channel changing to be
extremely reliable. Once I got things working at all, I don't recall
having a single mis-tune, so that puts it up at 99.9%+ reliability.
(FireWire video capture is a bit lower than that -- maybe 99.5%.)