[mythtv-users] How to ensure STB is on

Jerry Rubinow jerrymr at gmail.com
Mon May 3 02:41:06 UTC 2010


After a few trouble-free years, for the third time in a month, I discovered
my STB had somehow entered a power-off state, and as a result I missed a
couple of recordings.

So I figured there must be some way to have myth ensure the STB is on before
starting a record.  In my setup the STB is from Verizon (Motorola QIP-6200),
the output of which runs through an HD-PVR, before going into Myth.  The STB
channel is controlled via firewire.

First I looked at 6200ch, but it will only toggle the power state,
regardless of the state it's in.  I found another program, sa3250cmd, which
has discrete on and off options, but this did not work.  The on option would
only toggle the power state, and the off option did nothing.  I tried
contacting the authors of these, but didn't get any response, and I wasn't
able to find any info on the protocols for communicating with the STBs.  So
that was a dead end so far.  Perhaps this is not possible on the QIP-6200?
 Does anyone know or have pointers to further info about the protocols?

Searching the list archives, I found another route someone tried, namely
analyzing the stream coming from the tuner for blank frames.  This is
actually not possible in my case, because I get a 0-length recording when
the STB is off.  On the other hand, this presents an easier solution, since
the recording is 0-length.  So my channel change script would:

# record from hd-pvr for 1 second
cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/test.ts

# test for 0 length
if [! -s /tmp/test.ts]
then

    6200ch -w
fi

3. delay?
4. run normal 6200ch command to change channels
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