Setting up IR blaster

[Kamakzie1976]

I'm finally about to buy the Colossus 2 to use with my DirecTV receiver. My question is do I set up the IR blaster through nextPVR or do I need a third-party software for that? Also I assume my over the air tuners will integrate with the Colossus 2 and be separate in nextPVR? I'm almost positive I have a USB-UIRT laying around somewhere but I thought I would get an extension cord for the IR blaster that plugs into the Colossus 2.

[sub]

NextPVR doesn't know anything about IR blasters itself. It will however run an executable of your choosing when it's about to change channels. This has been used by people to interact with all sorts of IR blasters, including MCE ones, home-made serial cable ones, firewire devices, USB-UIRT and Hauppauge integrated blasters etc.

NextPVR does ship with a small wrapper executable you can use for the Hauppauge blasters. Just configure the blaster and set top box in Hauppauge's BlastCFG utility, then set the executable to HaupBlast/executable to HaupBlast.exe in the NPVR directory. For other blaster you can search the forums for names of utilities people have used.

[Kamakzie1976]

Could you suggest some good programs to use in conjunction with nextPVR to do the channel changing?

[sub]

It depends what blaster you're using.

If it's a Hauppauge one, use their BlastCFG to configure it, and HaupBlast.exe to do the blasting. Some people use USBUIRTSend.exe with their USB-UIRT. Some people use IRSS or HIP or Girder with their MCE blaster. I can't really give you any solid recommendations on these, or info on how to use them - I haven't done IR blasting here for years.

[Kamakzie1976]

Thank you for the tip, I got the stuff ordered so we will see when I get it on Wednesday.