[mythtv-users] Comcast DTA channel change breakage

[Karl Newman]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 2:06 PM, Gary Buhrmaster <gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 1:53 PM, Karl Newman <siliconfiend at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi list,
> >
> > Just thought I'd give a heads-up. Last night Comcast rolled out an
> update to
> > my ancient DTA (Pace DC50X, et al). I could tell right away because
> instead
> > of a small black box with only the channel number on it appearing during
> a
> > channel change, now it shows extended channel info over the lower third
> of
> > the screen. Anyway, that update broke my channel change script and
> caused a
> > few recordings to record on the (same) wrong channel. After some
> > investigation, I discovered that my configuration was set to send
> KEY_INFO
> > to the box before it changed the channel (it was intended as a sort of
> exit
> > command). It used to be benign because it would only show the small
> channel
> > indicator (which was shown anyway once the channel was changed), but now
> > with the larger info it apparently ignores other keypresses while it's
> > displayed. I'm using the LircChannelChanger.pl script with a config
> file, so
> > I just commented out the "beforekeys" line and it started working again.
> >
> > TL;DR: Don't use KEY_INFO with a Pace DTA
>
> I guess you can blame me for that.  At the time I wrote the example,
> KEY_INFO would also exit from one of the diagnostic screens that
> you could get stuck on (and then channel changing would not work),
> and while KEY_INFO would place the channel number on the screen
> if you were not already displaying it, it was a very mild issue to
> increase the odds that channel changes would work reliable.
>
> If you are now on one of the diagnostic screens, is there a key
> which will exit it other than INFO that does not have other
> side-effects on the normal display?
>
> I've never really played around with it and thus haven't ever seen any
diagnostic screens. So I don't know what would exit them... I'm not sure
why Info blocks channel changing now anyway. That seems pretty dumb.


> Of course, in Comcastic land, if you skip the CAPEX for the tuner,
> a CableCARD (in most franchises) costs no more than the DTA
> rental these days now that it is no longer free (there are still some
> (special?) franchises on legacy contract terms where the price per
> month is somewhat higher).
>

That is my plan, eventually. It's mostly inertia that's keeping me with a
DTA. I suspect there are very few people left using mythtv with a DTA on
Comcast.

Thanks,

Karl
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20150709/afc6ce3f/attachment.html>