Comcast encrypts extended basic channels

[tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org (Tom Metro)]

Bill Bogstad wrote:
> Some versions of the PVR150s come with IR blasters built into them.

Yes, I've seen that...I saw a few on eBay, and I saw that LIRC claimed
to support it.


> But I have (through personal experience) learned that
> they aren't general purpose IR blasters.  They are preprogrammed
> knowing about certain kinds of remotes in the firmware.   I found no
> way to get them to change channels on a DTA.

Ah, that's very useful to know.


>> I called today to get pricing on renting two STBs. Turns out they run
>> $8/month each, so that would be an additional $16/month...
> 
> In my case, I subscribe to more then what DTAs decode and doing this 
> would allow me to record things like BBC America which I have never
> been able to do in the past.

So you're saying you don't currently use full STBs with MythTV, but you
are considering it?

My channel package doesn't include BBC America, which I'd find useful,
yet oddly I can watch "free for subscriber" shows from BBC America on
"in-demand."

The channel package does include HBO, but I've essentially been ignoring
it, as I knew I'd have fleeting access to it, and it wasn't worth the
bother to rent STBs to pipe it into MythTV. If it isn't in MythTV, it's
as good as invisible.


> I still don't have my DTAs recording to my MythTV box as I can't get
> my USB IR blaster to work on that machine. They work fine on other
> machines, but just not on that machine.

I see.

So maybe it would be good to know which IR blaster you used so as to
avoid it.

I did some recent data mining on the MythTV users list to see what
current IR blaster recommendations were. Not as much chatter on this
topic as I would have thought, given that a lot of users must be going
through this conversion lately.

Most recommendations were for http://irblaster.info/, which is one of
the old-style serial-port blasters that I think relies on high-speed
handshake signal line twiddling and won't work with a USB adapter. Even
if I happen to have serial ports available on my current back-end, I'd
rather something that doesn't depend on the main CPU for signal timing.

Or non-specific MCE remote kits. I searched for the latter on eBay and I
see there are a ton of Asian knock-offs. For example:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140281621575

Hard to tell which are fake and which are OEM. With compatibility
unknown, I guess that suggests staying away from eBay.

What I find on NewEgg are MCE remotes + receivers. No IR transmitters.

Amazon has this:
http://www.amazon.com/Kinamax-Blaster-Remote-Control-Signal/dp/B0012BU3DU

with mediocre reviews. Would need to do some digging to see if LIRC
supports it.

Research also turned up that there are new and old versions of the MCE
hardware interface, and that LIRC might not support the new version,
though that was an old thread, that I assume has since been resolved.

Also, things apparently get trickier when you need to control multiple
blasters. Though clearly others have done this successfully.


> I even went out and purchased a PCI USB card in case there was
> something wrong with the USB ports on that machine and still no luck.

Odd. You could always try running it through a hub
(ideally, powered), but that's not likely to help.


> I've yet to see a TV that has an ATSC and QAM tuner that doesn't do
> NTSC as well.

Ah, you're probably right. I looked at the first 3 different brands
returned by a search on Amazon for "lcd tv 32." Samsung couldn't be
bothered to mention what kind of tuner their TV has. (I guess why waste
effort mentioning something the marketing guys can't push.) Both LG and
Panasonic specified ATSC/QAM/NTSC, with LC explicitly stating "Clearn
[sic] QAM."

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/