[RobertH]

Actually thats a little off, with your current setup you use your firefly remote wich is RF (radio) based and it sends commands to beyondTV directly using the firefly receiver and software, beyondTV then in-turn tells your tv tuner to change to channel X wich beyondTV then starts recording.

(firefly->firefly receiver->firefly software->beyondTV->tv tuner)

When setting up in a digital cable / satelite setup, it basically does the same thing, except beyondTV tells your tv tuner to stay on say channel 3/4, or to capture from its svideo input, and then tells the irblaster to tell the cable box to change channels.

(firefly->firefly receiver->firefly software->beyondTV(sets tv tuner to correct channel/input)->irblaster->cable box)

The only thing your changing here is what is changing the channels, in your current setup its your tv tuner, in the digital cable setup it would be the irblaster->cable box. Just think about it this way, if youve got digital cable hooked up to a regular old tv set, you dont tell use the tuner in the tv to change channels you set it to the video input or on channel 3/4 and then use the cable box's remote. BeyondTV with an irblaster does the same thing, you tell beyondTV what you want to see and it tells your cable box to show it to you.

Some cable boxes such as the motorola 2xxx series, and satelite receivers from directv can be controlled directly using a serial cable.