work with a cable box ?

[rh71]

It seems to me (a newbie) that I cannot use the tv guide to switch/view channels because my tv feed is coming from the cable box. Clicking on a show does not switch my cable box' channel. How do people get around this problem ?

using PVR-150MCE.

[lucindrea]

if you got the 150 you should of also gotten the remote with the ir dongle .. the irdongle is what is used to switch the cable box

[smeghead]

The 150 comes with an IR "dongle". This is an infra red transmitter / receiver. You place it over the "magic eye" of your cable box and it transmits the IR codes to change the cable box channels (in the same way as your cable remote does now). This is usually called an IR Blaster. The receiver part of the IR dongle receives the commands from your 150 remote control.

[rh71]

I got the 150MCE version which does not come with any extras except the FM antenna cable.

So is there another work around ?

[smeghead]

I should have read your post more carefully, my apologies.

You need to buy an IR Blaster, I have a one that connects to my serial port but there are others that connect to USB. Depends on how far away the cable box is from your PC. Serial wire length can easily be 20m or more where as USB generally must be within about 8m to 10m without USB extenders/amplifiers.

Do a search on the forum or google for IR Blaster.

There are some that are directly compatible with GBPVR. Mine isn't but you can get GBPVR to execute a dos program to change channels. This is all set up in the config program.

The downside if any, is the time taken to change channels. It takes me about 3 or 4 seconds to change channels so channel surfing is out of the question.