using MCE Remote with Beyond TV 4

[John Sparks]

I want to run BTV 4 with my MCE (windows Media Center Edition) remote.

Once I am in the BTV interface, the MCE remote works fine.

The problem is LAUNCHING BTV with the MCE remote. There seems to be no buttons on the remote that will start up the BTV interface.

Is there any way to program any of the buttons on the MCE remote to launch BTV 4?

[tscales]

No. not that I have found.

[John Sparks]

Rats.

How about anyone else?

What I am ultimately trying to do is set up a logitech Harmony 880 remote to control beyond tv. I have a firefly remote, but that is RF and so the harmony cant emulate it. It can emulate the media center remote control pretty well. So I was trying to get it to emulate the media center remote control and since btv can use the mce remote it would be able to control btv. But there is no way to actually start up BTV using the media center remote that I can see.

[tscales]

I suspect the problem is, what application would look for the button? Firefly has its application running in the system tray all the time.

If you had a Firefly Mini, you could do this, as you could train the Harmony to emulate the mini's 'BTV start' button. Anyone near you have a mini you could borrow long enough to train from?

Tom

[John Sparks]

well I was hoping one of two things:

1. BTV sits in the tray and the mce remote can talk to the btv viewscape once it is running so why can't it intercept the signal while in the tray?

2. maybe there is a way to program the microsoft remote under media center to tell it to launch a different program (like btv)

[queonda]

Originally Posted by tscales

I suspect the problem is, what application would look for the button? Firefly has its application running in the system tray all the time.

If you had a Firefly Mini, you could do this, as you could train the Harmony to emulate the mini's 'BTV start' button. Anyone near you have a mini you could borrow long enough to train from?

Tom

I tried running the mini.exe with the USB-irt but I think the program is looking for the USB-miniIR. So if you want to emulate the mini's start button, you would also need the IR which comes from the mini, right?

[queonda]

Originally Posted by John Sparks

well I was hoping one of two things:

1. BTV sits in the tray and the mce remote can talk to the btv viewscape once it is running so why can't it intercept the signal while in the tray?

2. maybe there is a way to program the microsoft remote under media center to tell it to launch a different program (like btv)

Is the MCE remote an IR or RF remote? If it's an IR you can us my remote HIP software.

[queonda]

John,

I sent you a link to another forum which talks about how to do it. I think it's againt forum rules to put that link here. Check your PM and see if that helps.

[John Sparks]

Thanks


That looks like it might just do the trick.

I don't think it would be wrong to post a link on HIP here. I think the rules are just referring to links to competitor's products and the HIP software is more of a co-opeperative product and free (basically a free Girder replacement and people talk about Girder on this site all the time) so I dont think it would be against the rules to discuss it.

Maybe a snapstream employee reading this can comment?

[queonda]

No, but the link I sent you was to another Forum, a fan base for another competitors product. talking about HIP.

[John Sparks]

well so far HIP is working. Its a bit hard to understand at first, but once I "got it" everything started working. My biggest problem was that after you install it, you have to go to the control panel and swap out the driver for the MCE IR receiver with one from HIP and the help file didnt tell me that, I had to find out by reading a FAQ on that other web forum. Until I did that, I could not get anything to work and was about to toss it all away.

Now it works great. I still need to go through and map all of the snapstream beyond TV keystroke commands to the MCE remote in HIP but then everything should work fine. If anyone else has the MCE remote and wants to use it to control BTV using HIP, I will try to attach the finalized configuration file when I am done.

oh and I want to post the link to the HIP software. I hope the mods don't mind. It is not a competitor to BTV in any way, but like a free alternative to Girder, which they seem to promote on this board quite a bit.

http://www.byremote.com.au/HIP/


PS - the FAQ that tells you how to set up HIP with MCE remote (the part I had trouble with until I read this) is here: http://www.byremote.com.au/Hip/mce_remote_faq.htm

[John Sparks]

I started a new thread telling how to set it all up and I included my configuration file so others won't have to do all the same work.

http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/show...56&postcount=1