[mythtv-users] IR transmitter and receiver

Joseph A. Caputo jcaputo1 at comcast.net
Wed Jun 9 13:10:14 EDT 2004


On Tuesday 08 June 2004 22:54, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> I'm building a second front-end in the basement and need to have an
> IR receiver for it, but I am anticipating using a generic V4L capture
> card (no tuner) connected to my VCR to act as a secondary backend. 
> If this works, I'm going to need an IRblaster type device to send
> signals to the VCR to tune to a particular channel.
>
> My main system is using a Streamzap USB IR receiver and I saw in the
> MythTV docs that the Actisys transmitter is recommended for this
> task. But has anyone purchased an off-the-shelf transmitter and
> receiver combo that works with Linux?  I imagine I could save a
> little cash by getting one of those rather than buying one of each.  
> I know that building my own would save tons of cash but I do not wish
> to proceed down that road and would much rather purchase something
> pre-built.

For what it would cost to get a pre-built IR Blaster-type device, you 
could probably get an inexpensive V4L card with an integrated tuner and 
eliminate the need for the VCR as an external tuner.  You can easily 
find them on sale or on eBay in the $20-25 price range; definitely 
under $45.  Much easier to set up, too -- IIRC, LIRC does not work 
out-of-the-box with 2 devices (receiver + transmitter) and needs to be 
patched; don't know if this has made it into later release or not.  If 
you still want input from the VCR (for old VHS recordings), you can 
hook it up to a second input on the card.  If you get a card with a 
built-in IR receiver, you save yourself the cost of *any* external IR 
devices.

BTW, I assume you meant "building a second combo frontend/backend" in 
your post.  A frontend-only does not need a tuner or capture card at 
all; just a network connection to your existing backend with enough 
bandwidth to handle streaming the recordings.

-JAC


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