After a few trouble-free years, for the third time in a month, I discovered my STB had somehow entered a power-off state, and as a result I missed a couple of recordings.<div><br></div><div>So I figured there must be some way to have myth ensure the STB is on before starting a record. In my setup the STB is from Verizon (Motorola QIP-6200), the output of which runs through an HD-PVR, before going into Myth. The STB channel is controlled via firewire.</div>
<div><br></div><div>First I looked at 6200ch, but it will only toggle the power state, regardless of the state it's in. I found another program, sa3250cmd, which has discrete on and off options, but this did not work. The on option would only toggle the power state, and the off option did nothing. I tried contacting the authors of these, but didn't get any response, and I wasn't able to find any info on the protocols for communicating with the STBs. So that was a dead end so far. Perhaps this is not possible on the QIP-6200? Does anyone know or have pointers to further info about the protocols?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Searching the list archives, I found another route someone tried, namely analyzing the stream coming from the tuner for blank frames. This is actually not possible in my case, because I get a 0-length recording when the STB is off. On the other hand, this presents an easier solution, since the recording is 0-length. So my channel change script would:</div>
<div><br></div><div># record from hd-pvr for 1 second</div><div>cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/test.ts</div><div><br></div><div># test for 0 length</div><div>if [! -s /tmp/test.ts]</div><div>then</div><div><br></div><div> 6200ch -w</div>
<div>fi</div><div><br></div><div>3. delay?</div><div>4. run normal 6200ch command to change channels</div><div><br></div><div><br></div>