[mythtv-users] Wrote Script to Power on Cable Box

[jr]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 10:50 AM, Preston Crow
<pc-mythtv08a at crowcastle.net> wrote:
> On 06/25/12 10:40, jr wrote:
>>
>> I have been having trouble with my Cable Box shutting off on a weekly
>> basis.  Usually at some point during the weekend so that Sunday or
>> Monday night shows are lost.  After a bit of research, I finally sat
>> down last night and wrote a script to cat from my HDPVR into a file
>> for 5 secs, then check the file size.  If its zero, then I use my
>> channel change script to power on the tuner. Is that going to work
>> with any type of reliability?
>
>
> What method are you using to control your cable box?  If you are using an IR
> blaster, then that may be the best you can do--keep toggling power until you
> get data.  If you are using firewire, then it should let you send a status
> command to check if the power is on, and you should have separate power on
> and off commands, as well as a toggle.  Of course, some boxes have firmware
> that doesn't support all of those commands, so you might be out of luck
> (e.g., if you have a Verizon Cisco box, the status command will work, but
> you'll need an IR blaster to send the power command).
>
> If your cable box supports it, firewire is usually the best way to control
> it.
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IR Blaster against a cisco explorer 4640(?)hdc.  My FE/BR is a
mini-itx i5; Intel Mobo. No firewire and I cannot add a card because
the pci-e slot is currently occupied  by a nVidia 210 for vdpau.  I
suppose that I could switch to VAAPI for the onboard graphics, but I
am not getting a stable feeling about that from this forum.