I see many IR Blaster solutions for controlling Set top boxes, but can't seem to find any information for controlling STBs that only use RF.
is there such thing as a USB/RF blaster?
Is there a way to convert an IR Blaster signal to RF?
Any suggestions appreciated.
I dont think there is an RF Blaster. These signals aren't standard like those produced by IR devices, so it'd be next to impossible to get an RF blaster capable of producing the correct frequency and combination of proprietary signals of an unknown STB.
How do people with Directv/Dish Network control their STB? I thought all the newer ones used RF?
I've been searching for this answer for about a year. There is no such device in existence. I even challenged the brain trust here for a creative solution. I was thinking along the lines of some sort of electronics to actually press the buttons on the remote. Someone suggested actually taking the remote apart and adding circuitry that would add the voltage to the appropriate button, etc. I'm not that much into electronics so I just gave up.
I have a Dish Network dual tuner (322) dedicated for GB-PVR. TV1 is IR and TV2 is UHF. In this situation, I can't have GB-PVR picking which tuner to use since it can't change the channel on TV2 so what I had to do was to split the TV listings (a set of listings for TV1 and a set of listings for TV2) so that I could control which dish "tuner" I was recording from.
I IR blast TV1, and set timers for TV2. I use TV2 for recurring recordings now so it's not that big of a deal. This works okay for me 'cause most of my recordings are OTA on the main networks anyway, and the analog capture from the dish STB sucks compared to the HD OTA recordings.
thanks for the feedback. I may have to have dish swap this unit out for 2 301 receivers like I was going to do in the first place. If I discover any creative solutions, I'll post them.
kurtis Wrote:thanks for the feedback. I may have to have dish swap this unit out for 2 301 receivers like I was going to do in the first place.
That's what I'd recommend. I wish I'd done that, but I only have a few months left on my contract before I drop them, so I'm just being patient...