My Newbie Understanding of gaining Digital Channels.

[jbanacek]

I want to make sure I am clear on a few things. In order to get digital channels with SS it is my umpression that I do the following:

1) Hook up and the IR device (MyBlaster or IR-200L) to communicate with the PC\Tuner (In my case and AverTV Stereo).

2) Hook up a dedicated Digital Cable Reciever (in my case a Motorola DCT2224) to the capture card.

3) Instal HE Remote, which I understand to be a software program. HE Remote then communicates with the IR device so that it sends a signal to the Cable Reciever to change the channel when a scheduled recording occurs. I also assume that when I maunually change the channel in the tuner software (SS or other) the IR will send a signal to the reciever.

4) Because we are controling the reciever we get all the digital chanels as well as the basic cable (channels 1-100).
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Am I right on any, or all of these points?

I am also curious if anyone is certain whether MyBlaster or IR-200L will work with my AverTV Stereo which is the lower end model that did not come with a remote control.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Jake

[robert@my.tv]

Originally posted by jbanacek
1) Hook up and the IR device (MyBlaster or IR-200L) to communicate with the PC\Tuner (In my case and AverTV Stereo).

The IR device (or blaster) usually plugs into a serial or USB port. It doesn't really interact directly with the capture card, so as long as both of them are supported by BTV, they should get along just fine.

2) Hook up a dedicated Digital Cable Reciever (in my case a Motorola DCT2224) to the capture card.

Dedicated is definitely the good way to go. If the cable box and your capture card have SVideo outputs/inputs, that should be your first choice. Composite is okay. Coax is to be avoided if possible.

3) Instal HE Remote, which I understand to be a software program. HE Remote then communicates with the IR device so that it sends a signal to the Cable Reciever to change the channel when a scheduled recording occurs. I also assume that when I maunually change the channel in the tuner software (SS or other) the IR will send a signal to the reciever.

HE Remote is 3rd party software. Both the MyBlaster and the Actisys IR-200L can work with BTV without it, but some users have found they prefer the additional flexibility that HE Remote can provide.

4) Because we are controling the reciever we get all the digital chanels as well as the basic cable (channels 1-100).

Yep. Any channel that you can tune to with the remote control can be tuned to by BTV using the blaster. That includes any premium channels that you subscribe to.

You should know that I work for the company that makes and sells the MyBlaster, so this might be a bit biased, but if you're deciding between the Actisys and the MyBlaster, I'd recommend the latter.

I'm pretty sure the Moto DCT2224 is supported by the built-in library (though it may be listed in the library under General Instruments) so you don't need to learn any buttons as you would with the Actisys. That makes the setup procedure quite a bit simpler.

[jbanacek]

Thanks for your step by step reply Robert. So far this seems like a great product and a very usefull forum.

Jake

[jfourman]

Some users (not all) have had success with connecting to the serial port of the DCT2244 rather than using the Actisys IR200L. Some cable providers seem to have enabled the serial ports on the cable boxes, others have not. My cable provider is Comcast.

I originally was using the IR200L, but prefer the direct serial connection.

An important note on HERemote: I began having problems with channel changing locking up BTV after installing 3.4x. Research on this forum led me to discover that the problem was between HERemote and the new BTV release. The fix is detailed here:

http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...threadid=11609

I also discovered that if you are using the trial version of HERemote when it expires, BTV stops working until you register your copy of HE Remote. It was hard for me to track down this problem.

There is another free dll posted that will allow you to control your DCT2244 via a serial cable. I have not tried this since HE Remote has worked so reliably for me. Info on this dll can be found here:

http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...threadid=11082

Good luck.

[jbanacek]

Thanks for your step by step reply Robert. So far this seems like a great product and a very usefull forum.

Jake

**Sorry for the double post**

[bigmeancow]

I'm using a MyBlaster to control my DCT2244 and it works great. Had it up and running in no time and no problems so far. (My box doesn't have a serial port, so I couldn't go that route.)