<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<TITLE>Message</TITLE>
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1276" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY><!-- Converted from text/plain format -->
<P><FONT size=2>Ian,<BR><BR>I apologize for my *stupid* comment and meant no
offense. I did do my homework before posting and my frustration was born
out of the hours of work poured into researching this (primarily combing through
repeated and unhelpful data). I *had* read your HOWTO (and very much
appreciated it) and was unsuccessful in getting channel changing to work.
My reference to "coherence" earlier was based upon the unavailability of an
exhaustive howto. Nevertheless, I have a couple questions:<BR><BR>1.
Which digital box do you have? I have a DCT-2224 and your instructions for
determining firmware on my box would not work. There was no option off the
menu accessible with the remote that I could locate. After reading through
threads on the tivocommunity site, I found that I had to hit the power button
(to power off the box) and quickly hit the select button. Then a diag
screen would appear and I had to arrow down to #6 to see my
firmware.<BR><BR>2. It's been a while since I tried your python script,
but if I remember correctly, it didn't provide any logging options (I could be
wrong and missed it somewhere). For instance, the other DCT Serial
solution provided in the contrib dir has a verbose option which gives me error
messages relating to communication with the DCT box (i.e. it received no
response from the box or something similar). This logging helped me
isolate which area I needed to focus on (assuming that it's loggin was
accurate).<BR><BR>3. I'm leaning towards the fact that my serial port is
most likely disabled, and I have been alternating calling the cable company
(COX) with a friend of mine, attempting to convince them to enable it (he is in
the same situation). Your blurb about being creative with them is by far
an understatement :) ; It must be a work of art in social engineering (which we
have yet to accomplish). Something that has been helpful for us to at
least get past the initial (We don't support that etc, or the typical No way in
hell) was to:<BR> a. try and bypass
customer support and go to technical
support<BR> b. let them know that you
are not trying to get support for your "Tivo" but that you are only interested
in getting the DCT serial enabled.<BR>
c. they will tell you that it is impossible to enable it, but a technician DOES
have the ability to enable and disable this feature
*remotely*.<BR> d. A cable technician
who posted on the tivo forum mentioned that if you are able to see the
diagnostics menu (mentioned earlier) then that is an indicator that your serial
port is *disabled*. I do not know if this is true or not.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Good luck to everyone else working with their cable
company. If any of you have Cox and was able to get their serial port
enabled PLEASE let us know what you did...</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Thanks</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2></FONT><BR><BR><BR><FONT
size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR>From: mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org
[</FONT><A href="mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org"><FONT
size=2>mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org</FONT></A><FONT size=2>] On Behalf
Of ian@duckland.org<BR>Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 11:15 PM<BR>To:
Discussion about mythtv<BR>Subject: RE: [mythtv-users] DCT2224 Digital Cable
Box<BR><BR><BR>On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, Stephen Mowry wrote:<BR><BR>> I know this
leaves out a lot of details, but since I don't have it<BR>> working, I'm not
yet ready to write a detailed HOWTO on all the steps<BR>> for enabling and
troubleshooting DCT2XXX serial cable channel<BR>> changing. There are
an incredible number of people using these boxes<BR>> and I think it would be
great if someone (who's gone through all of<BR>> this already) could compile
their knowledge into a *GOOD and USEFUL*<BR>> HOWTO with more detail than the
few paragraphs in the Myth docs.<BR><BR>Oh bloddy hell. I wrote a HOWTO on
this *months* ago. If you've got<BR>mythtv on a machine at home, you have
a copy of it on your machine. Look<BR>in the contrib directory and you'll
see TWO sets of code for changing<BR>channels on a DCT2000 series box. One
is a set of Python scripts where<BR>*no-one* has complained about the
README. The newer piece of code is Jim<BR>Paris' C code that works faster,
has better error checking, and also has a<BR>README file that *no-one* has
complained about.<BR><BR>><BR>> MythTV is pretty much USELESS without
channel changing, and it's<BR>> completely stupid that there isn't any more
coherent documentation<BR>> supporting the DCT2XXX series... or try finding
docs on getting the<BR>> default DISH Dish Pro 301 (that another few million
people have.)<BR><BR>You should do some more homework before calling situations
stupid. <BR>Attitudes like the above aren't very productive on this
list.<BR><BR>
-Ian<BR><BR></FONT></P></BODY></HTML>