Multiple STB's - is it possible?

[philly_phenom]

Is it possilbe for one PC to control multiple STB's if you have more than one USB-UIRT device (or some other IR blaster)?

If not maybe one w/ a blaster & one via firewire?

[martint123]

Yes, in the past I controlled one with a RedEye Serial and one with the hauppauge blaster on PVR150. I think you run into trouble if your two devices the same, like a pair of pvr150's. I had problems with the hauppauge pvr150 and nova-t-500 and had to disable the nova-t (it was only a receiver, but enough to upset the blaster on the 150).

[dark_half]

I use firewire two controll 2 STB's.

[philly_phenom]

I use firewire two controll 2 STB's.

Are the STB's both the same? I have plans to replace my current system with one running two HD-PVR's (once they are available) recording from two cable boxes (both Comcast supplied Motorola boxes).

[dark_half]

Yes they are both Motorola 6200's.

[philly_phenom]

Yes they are both Motorola 6200's.

Cool - any chance you could point me to a how to somewhere? or at least a "how to get started"?

[jbyram2]

For one of my recording sources, I use a single USB-UIRT to control both an antenna rotator and a Digital reciever. I use Girder to handle the logic. (mostly because the reciever needs ^ button presses to get to digital sub channels 2, 3 etc.)

For my other recording source, I just use Sub's USB-UIRT interface to drive the rotator alone, through the same USB-UIRT.

You should be able to drive any number of unique devices through the same IR blaster, so long as they don't respond to each others commands. If you had two STBs, (with no PVR setup) how would you control them seperately with a hand held remote? Is there a way to set one STB to emulate something else, or answer to a different brand's commands? My rotator had a setting that made it respond to a Panasonic DVD player command set.

[dark_half]

Cool - any chance you could point me to a how to somewhere? or at least a "how to get started"?

Get the driver from here http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/stbfirew...c185690663 or here http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/stbfirew...c185690663.

The second link above looks like older drivers but has great info on using firewire to change channels.

Code:

Firewire Channel Change Testing
If you have 1 STB MyTray will configure itself automatically. With 2 STBs MyTray will configure itself but may get the STBs the wrong way round. The following is a way to test the STB channel changing directly.



Run Start Menu->All Programs->Timmmoore Firewire STB->Cmd



Run “channel –v”

(Only enter the stuff between the quotes, not including the quotes)

You should see something like



Firewire STB channel changer V1.0.9, by timmmoore

Device 1 Channel 1 Timeout 0 Dec 0

1 "FireBus MPEG2TS Tuner Subunit Device"

'Motorola AV/C Tuner Device'

"@device:pnp:\\?\avc#motorola&dct-6200&typ_5&id_0#376ed3feff5c0e00#{65e8773d-8f56-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\global" 0

2 "FireBus MPEG2TS Tuner Subunit Device"

'Motorola AV/C Tuner Device'

"@device:pnp:\\?\avc#motorola&dct-6200&typ_5&id_0#84fea2feff9f0f00#{65e8773d-8f56-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\global" 0

3 "Motorola AV/C Panel Device"

'Motorola AVC Panel Device'



UniqueID '376ed3feff5c0e00'

VendorID 'e5c'

ModelID '620a'

VendorText 'MOTOROLA'

ModelText 'DCT-6200'

"@device:pnp:\\?\avc#motorola&dct-6200&typ_9&id_0#376ed3feff5c0e00#{65e8773d-8f56-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\global" 1

4 "Motorola AV/C Panel Device"

'Motorola AVC Panel Device'



UniqueID '84fea2feff9f0f00'

VendorID 'f9f'

ModelID '620a'

VendorText 'MOTOROLA'

ModelText 'DCT-6200'

"@device:pnp:\\?\avc#motorola&dct-6200&typ_9&id_0#84fea2feff9f0f00#{65e8773d-8f56-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\global" 1

5 'NVTV'

"@device:pnp:\\?\pci#ven_123f&dev_8120&subsys_024810de&rev_b1#5&1ea1f09a&0&2048f0#{65e8773d-8f56-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\capture" 0

6 'NVTV'

"@device:pnp:\\?\pci#ven_123f&dev_8120&subsys_024810de&rev_b1#5&1ea1f09a&0&2848f0#{65e8773d-8f56-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\capture" 0

7 'VBox Vb35xx Capture'

"@device:pnp:\\?\usb#vid_14f3&pid_a560#600010003d#{65e8773d-8f56-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\{07ddc96b-774d-4438-aa05-23ea13e922eb}" 0

Device Id ""

Device Version "2.1.0"



Look for Motorola AV/C Panel Device; you will see it occurs twice for device 3 and 4, one for each of my STBs



Try

Channel –v 3 59

This will send a change channel command to channel 59 to device 3. Look at your STBs to see if they obey the command and if you have more than one STB which STB is which. If you want to use it with MCE note the UniqueID for each STBs and how it maps to which STB and also note which STB is tuner 1 and tuner 2 in MCE.



You can see in the list, device 1 and 2 are the AVC tuner firewire devices, 3 and 4 are the AVC panel devices. 5 and 6 are for my dual NVIDIA tuner card and 7 is for my USB VBox HTDV box



If you just want to use the command line application you are done, if you want a command line without a cmd box then channelw.exe takes the same arguments without outputting any text and output opening a cmd window. If you are controlling channel.exe or channelw.exe from another program you may want to use the –n parameter and replace the Device number by the UniqueID. Adding or removing devices will not affect the UniqueID but will affect the device number. To find out the parameters for channel.exe and channelw.exe, type channel -h, you should see:



D:\fire>channel /?

channel: Change channel via firewire, timmmoore Copyright 2005

Firewire STB channel changer V1.0.9, by timmmoore



channel -v -tN -aM -d -n Device Channel

-v: verbose

-aN: alternate commands, N = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4

     0: send channel as a single command (doesn't work while streaming)

     1: send channel as a 3 press key commands

     2: send channel as a 3 press/release key commands (default)

     3: send channel as a 3 release key commands

     4: send channel as a single command (works with SA3250, SA8X00)

-tN: timeout in milliseconds between digits for -a1, 2, 3 (default: 50)

-f: force commands to be sent on non-supported devices

-d: decimal, send channel as a decimal single key

-n: device number is firewire unique name



Note: Channel by default checks the firewire device and picks the correct command. Parameters should only be needed during testing of a new device.

Once you have that working you can set up GBPVR to use the channel.exe to change the channels independtly using the correct firewire device number.

[philly_phenom]

Thanks!!