Sat receiver as a Client?

[flyswatta]

Not sure if it's possible, but it would be awesome to take an old satellite receiver and turn it into a gbpvr client. Maybe some sort of mvpmc emulator or something.

A DirectTV 10-250 fell into my possession and I know it's hackable where you can get a bash shell. How would one go about trying to compile mvpmc on it, or does anyone know if there are any "hacks" that would allow for standalone software for OTA DVR's on older DVRs?

[mvallevand]

Certainly sat receivers have the potential to be emulation mode targets, if their wired network performance is up to it. A good example might be the dbox2 which is very similar to the mediamvp from a hardware perspecitive.

This is not something you do overnight, but basically you have to do the process now that I am dong with the popcornhour unit as was done with mediamvp and mvpmc in the past. The advantage is knowing that the emulation mode code is reasonably sound and reasonably portable the effort is worth it if there lots of users. For you, I think you will have to decide if it is worth it. Here are some basic steps

1. learn how to cross-compile (compile software for a different hardware platforms). You can cross-compile from windows with cygwin, but it is easier from linux.

2. find (or build) a toolchain for your platform.

3. find out the if your platform supports posix threads, if not you have to rewrite emulation mode.

4. find out all you can about the OSD graphics, remote control, and audio/video control since you have to build custom libraries for these.

5. test and test and test

6. repeat step 5

Martin

[flyswatta]

Yeh, it doesn't sound like it would be worth the effort. Plus when I thought about it more, most sat receivers don't have network access, so a client wouldn't work. Since they only really have 2 models of sat receivers available as OTA DVRs, (and they are quite pricey) I kinda thought a port of GBPVR (standalone) on an older sat dvr would be really slick.

As you mentioned, it's probably only worth the time for multiple users, since the hardware would vary from manufacturer and model.

Thanks for the input!