[mythtv-users] Comcast DTA channel change breakage

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 1:53 PM, Karl Newman <siliconfiend at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> Just thought I'd give a heads-up. Last night Comcast rolled out an update to
> my ancient DTA (Pace DC50X, et al). I could tell right away because instead
> of a small black box with only the channel number on it appearing during a
> channel change, now it shows extended channel info over the lower third of
> the screen. Anyway, that update broke my channel change script and caused a
> few recordings to record on the (same) wrong channel. After some
> investigation, I discovered that my configuration was set to send KEY_INFO
> to the box before it changed the channel (it was intended as a sort of exit
> command). It used to be benign because it would only show the small channel
> indicator (which was shown anyway once the channel was changed), but now
> with the larger info it apparently ignores other keypresses while it's
> displayed. I'm using the LircChannelChanger.pl script with a config file, so
> I just commented out the "beforekeys" line and it started working again.
>
> TL;DR: Don't use KEY_INFO with a Pace DTA

I guess you can blame me for that.  At the time I wrote the example,
KEY_INFO would also exit from one of the diagnostic screens that
you could get stuck on (and then channel changing would not work),
and while KEY_INFO would place the channel number on the screen
if you were not already displaying it, it was a very mild issue to
increase the odds that channel changes would work reliable.

If you are now on one of the diagnostic screens, is there a key
which will exit it other than INFO that does not have other
side-effects on the normal display?

Of course, in Comcastic land, if you skip the CAPEX for the tuner,
a CableCARD (in most franchises) costs no more than the DTA
rental these days now that it is no longer free (there are still some
(special?) franchises on legacy contract terms where the price per
month is somewhat higher).