[mythtv-users] Comcast STB upgrade breaks firewire channel changing

[Christopher Meredith]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 5:43 PM, Christian Szpilfogel
<chriszpml at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 10/03/2011 5:05 PM, Christopher Meredith wrote:
>
>  On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 2:57 PM, Christian Szpilfogel <
>> chriszpml at gmail.com <mailto:chriszpml at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>    It is worth trying all options from 1 to 7. Even though it looks like
>>    each encoding is for a different box, the reality is that these
>>    are all
>>    permutations allowed within the standard. If none of these work then
>>    there is a permutation missing.
>>
>>    What mythchanger does is use the PANEL commands for an STB. This in
>>    effect is like pressing the buttons on a remote or front panel of the
>>    STB. Sometimes you can send the digits in a block (usually
>>    optional) but
>>    sometimes they have to be sent button by button. Sometimes the STB is
>>    looking for key press down and in others key press release. And in
>>    some
>>    cases like some SA boxes it is looking for a key press down
>>    followed by
>>    a key press release. The sequence of buttons required to change the
>>    channel should be the as on your remote. So if you need to press enter
>>    at the end then you will also need to do this via firewire (say using
>>    stb-command). The protocol for this has not been more complicated than
>>    this in my experience.
>>
>>    You can play with the code and try different options based on the
>>    examples you see. The first thing to note is try any digits with
>>    various
>>    options and see if the STB is responding at all.
>>
>>
>> So what does it mean if I've tried all 7 permutations, each with
>> combinations of 1, 2, 3, and 4-digit channel numbers, and in every case, the
>> STB does not respond in any way whatsoever? And I'll add that *capture* over
>> the exact same firewire connection works perfectly, as long as I manually
>> set the channel using the remote.
>>
> My interpretation is you haven't found the right digit incantation. As I
> said in my description you may need to try other permutations that are not
> covered within the 7 standard permutations. This will require some minor
> code mods to try and send the right messages. The simplest form is to send
> single digits. You may need to try button down followed by button release as
> an example with a single digit. Only option 1 does this from my read of the
> code and that is only for one permutation which sends the digits in bulk.
> You could try adding a key release for each other permutation to see if that
> helps. Note a key release should obviously match a key press. Look at
> "SA3250HD" in function ChStb1 for an example.
>
> Scientific Atlanta/Cisco are notoriously difficult to figure out from my
> own experience and from the perspective of the author of mythchanger. It is
> always possible they did something funky. It is also possible that they
> don't implement it but I actually doubt that.
>
> On a whim, also try stb-command with something like "stb-command -n
> <nodeid> <digit>" so for example "stb-command -n 1 1" (sub in the right node
> id as determined from plugreport. stb-command uses a different panel command
> to send the digits. Who knows they may have moved to that one.
>
> You can find stb-command at: http://code.google.com/p/stb-command/
>

I looked at the function you referred to in mythchanger.c and I think I see
what you mean, but I don't know enough about this to do anything with it.
And I tried stb-command as well. For most commands (including 0-9) it
returns:

Command Not Implemented on STB, Response: 0x08487C21

and the like. Some commands return success, but nothing actually happens. I
think I may officially be in over my head.
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