Hauppauge HD PVR 2: IR Blaster Setup procedure?

[alexpigment]

I should preface this by saying that I've spent about 3 hours trying to get my HD PVR 2 to change the channels of my Cisco 4642 box (which uses IR). I was unable to even do it in WinTV. There's a BlastCfg.exe from WinTV and I tried to let it automatically scan for the right codeset, tried to choose my cableco from the presets list as well as several similar boxes, let it learn the IR codes from my remote (which, by the way, would fail regularly and would often cause the BlastCfg program to crash). I see all the lights blinking on the blaster and I'm *pretty sure* I know where the IR sensor is on my cable box, but the channels never change.

Admittedly this seems like a Hauppauge issue, but their tech support is closed and I don't think I'll be around the house to call them anytime this week. But I wanted to ask you guys what is required to get the IR blaster to work in NextPVR. There's a HaupBlast.exe file in the installation directory, but there is no setup that I can find. Does this interface with a file that is created / stored via Hauppauge? If so, which one? Is getting a working config in BlastCfg.exe a necessity for the blaster to work in NextPVR? Thanks in advance.

[sub]

You really need to get the blaster working with your set top box in BlastCFG.exe before it'll work in NextPVR.

HaupBlast.exe doesn't have any user interface. It's just a simple utility that passes the channel number to BlastCFG. All the heavy lifting is done by the Hauppauge software.

[alexpigment]

OK, knowing it interfaces with BlastCFG at least tells me that it's something I need to take up with Hauppauge. Thank you very much for the confirmation.

[gr8whitenorth]

I tested various ir setups a few years ago. Research and my testing was, like you, the Hauppauge learning software crashed repeatedly. If you did manage to get through it, it didn't work anyway. If you only needed one of the default codesets it was okay.

I am using the IRServer Suite from the MediaPortal foums with a standard MCE USB IR transceiver. The default install does not install everything so check all the selections on install. Learns good. Use the IRBlast-NoWindow.exe executable. If you have 2 or more boxes it gets more complicated. To use my 2 boxes with different addresses, I wrote a short console program in Lazarus to parse the parameters of a folder name and the channel number. I put the codes in their own folder where the IRServer Suite codes are, example box1.

[alexpigment]

I just wanted to follow-up on this thread. I ended up getting a second HD PVR 2 for another room, then trying out the included IR blaster. This didn't work, matching my experiences before. However, I had a blaster sitting around from a WinTV-HVR-2250 and decided to try it out since the size of the blaster itself seemed slightly smaller. Turns out it works like a charm. For anyone else reading this, I believe Hauppauge sells this particular blaster on their website.