[mythtv-users] Remotely controlling Comcast "On Demand"

[Chris Ribe]

On 6/17/06, Jeff Wormsley <daworm at comcast.net> wrote:
> Michael T. Dean wrote:
> > Why?  The channel change script detects when the channel is an on-demand
> > channel and simply causes an IR transmitter to send the appropriate
> > start codes with the channel change.  Then, the on-demand starts playing
> > and Myth records it.  From the point it's started, it's no longer
> > on-demand--i.e. you don't pause it or fast-forward or rewind--it just
> > plays.  Since Myth is recording it, you can pause/rewind/etc. in Myth.
> >
> Umm... how do you propose to select the video that you "demand"?  Or, if
> you want Myth to do that, how do you propose to let Myth know what is
> available "On Demand" and how to go about navigating the cable box's
> menus to select it?
>
> So far, the best suggestion I'veecause seen is to manually record it.
>
> Jeff.
>
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I am in a similar situation to Tim w/ regards to my wife loving
Comcast's On Demand feature.  I'm actually a big fan of it, too,
because it fills one particular gap in programming that MythTV
doesn't:  it has recordings of shows that aired before I realized that
I wanted them, and it has them as soon as I realize that I want them.

The programming is certainly limited, but there is one subset of
programming that makes it worthwhile: the last season's worth of
episodes for every HBO series.  That accounts for a few hundred GB of
disk space that I am more than happy to let Comcast deal with.

At any rate, I can't do the traditional TV based method because noone
of my monitors have built in tv tuners.  The remote control issue that
Tim is having isn't really an issue for me either, because I have an
IR->RF->IR remote control repeater that lives near my frontend
monitor.

While my wife is fond enough of On Demand to resort to such antics as
finding a terminal and typing, "killall mythbackend; mplayer -fs
/dev/video0; ivtvctl --set-input 1;" I'd really like to integrate it
into my myth installation so a menu item will run a script that
changes the cable box to channel 1,  and runs tvtime in a full screen
window.

In a perfect world, I'd also like to use the tuner card dedicated to
On Demand use for Myth recordings when it isn't being used for On
Demand.