[mythtv-users] PVR-250 remote control: compatible with PCTV-800i interface

[Jarod Wilson]

On Mar 29, 2011, at 4:07 PM, Mark Lord wrote:

> I've always had one or two PVR-250 tuners in my Mythtv box
> for analog OTA recording.  As such, I've fiddled and gotten
> the remote control ports to work very well (patched my kernels
> to fix the b0rked button repeat rates etc..).
> 
> But this September 2011, analog TV disappears finally from where
> I live in Canada.  So I'll be yanking out the one remaining PVR-250
> and replacing it with another DTV tuner.
> 
> So, I need a new way to get the remote control to work.
> There are lots of options here, but I do really like the PVR-250
> silver remote (the smaller version), and we have a pair of them here.

Wait, what? You *like* those? Heh. I think they're atrocious. :)

I have at least a dozen remotes I like better than those flimsy
little things Hauppauge ships.

> I built a universal USB IR-receiver that works with LIRC (ftdi),
> but it just feels clunky compared with the interface in the PVR-250 cards,
> not nearly as responsive.
> 
> So.. my solution going forward:  I got a PCTV-800i card, formerly by
> Pinnacle but now owned by Hauppauge.  And as it turns out, the IR
> interface on that card recognizes and receives from my Hauppauge
> PVR-250 remote controls just fine.  Woo-hoo!
> 
> Of course it had the same b0rked repeated-button behaviour as
> the ir-kbd-i2c driver had, so I applied the same fixes to it
> (cx88-input.c), and now it ramps repeat rate up nice and smoothly.
> 
> So.. if you are a PVR-250 user and looking for a way to keep your
> remote control when ditching the PVR-250, this is one good option.

They work just fine with any raw IR receiver as well, such as the
mceusb, streamzap, iguanaIR and command IR receivers.

Amusingly, I have at least 30 different IR receivers and probably as
many IR remotes, but I don't use any of them for my main mythtv
system, since the bluetooth tivo slide remote is far more usable than
any IR remote, if only because IR wouldn't work very well with where
my myth box is situated, ~35ft from the TV, behind a wall, over in
the unfinished half of the basement, but also because its got a full
keyboard in it, and with appropriate kernel patching, every key works
perfectly via the HID layer. Perfection was when I added hid-tivo.c
that remaps some usages to MythTV default keybindings, so I'm using
every bit of functionality of the remote without lirc and without
having to do any remapping in userspace (either keytables or mythtv
side). Its not exactly a tenable solution for upstream though, and
Jiri seems to have forgot about the patches I submitted for it a
while ago...

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com