Using Beyond TV to control my Motorola DVR

[robertwinz]

I rent a HD DVR from my cable co, which is perfectly adequate in all aspects except the user interface. The search and scheduling functions are really bad. I don't really want to buy all the hardware to build my own PVR, and I'm willing to forego the ability to placeshift and/or get recordings off the DVR.

What would be good would be if I could use some combination of BeyondTV/Firefly/Girder to control my current DVR. That is, I'd search for programs and schedule recordings using BeyondTV, then some combination of software and plug-ins would change the channel and "push record" (via IR or serial) at the appropriate time based on that schedule.

Anyone know if that's possible? Or rather, it seems perfectly possible, anyone know if it's easy to do and the plug-ins exist?

[mayhem70]

Don't need any special plugin. It does that. You can use the tuner card's IR blaster if it came with one, or get a USB-UIRT to control your box.
http://www.snapstream.com/products/b...howitworks.asp

[Bigbird999]

What model of DVR? Some DVRs have active firewire ports and BTV can be configured to control the DVR via this port. Cost = $0 but it is a bit more involved than setting up the USB-IRT.

BB