[mythtv-users] Recording from STB that requests channel access pins

[Michael T. Dean]

On 01/13/2016 10:41 AM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 3:37 AM, Mark Perkins wrote:
>> Sorry to be vague, but at the time they were not relevant to me. But haven't there
>> been channel change scripts discussed that do something similar to overcome the
>> power toggle issue where the STB has an on/off toggle remote code?
> I don't think you could do this in the channel change script.  The
> problem is the delay.
>
> For powering on the STB, it's simple.  If your recording starts 30
> seconds before the program, it's no problem for the script to power on
> the STB *now* and return successfully, allowing MythTV to start the
> recording.  For the case of the pin entry, 30 seconds before the
> program there's no pin entry screen to detect.  The channel change
> script would need to wait for it before returning, but not all
> programs have a pin requirement, so it might end up waiting for
> something that never comes.

The channel change script simply needs to spawn a child process to do 
the monitoring (and pin entry), then return an exit code for MythTV 
indicating the status of the channel change.  So, technically, you can't 
do it in the channel change script, but you could (probably should) do 
it with a script called by the channel change script (using System 
Events--really the only other hook indicating start of recording--would 
add much more complexity than just using channel change scripts, and 
probably more latency and such, and may not be much help for Live TV, 
and ...).

Or, really, if I were doing it, I'd use a normal channel change script 
for sending button presses to the STB, but and create a 
script/program/... to monitor for whether a PIN is required and--if 
so--send the PIN using the normal channel change script, and have a 3rd 
script that simply orchestrates the calling of the scripts and set this 
3rd script as the MythTV channel change script.

Though the whole PIN entry at whenever the STB decides is completely 
broken--to the point that the provider really /should/ allow a way to 
disable it.  (And I'd search high and low--even wade through cable 
company customer support to try to get a different STB--for a way to 
disable it, even if doing so requires going into some 
service/maintenance interface that my cable company may not want to tell 
me about).

Mike