External Channel Changer

If you are using just the tuner without a cable box or satellite box, you won't need an external channel change script. Elsewise, read on.

Serial Channel Changer

If your cable box includes a "High Speed Data Port" or "Serial Port", you may be able to control all of your channel changes through this port. This is preferable over an IR transmitter because it's much more reliable. Call up your cable company and find out if the port is activated. If it isn't, ask them if they can activate it for your "Tivo". Much easier then trying to explain myth Smile :)

Sky satellite boxes in UK/Ireland and Foxtel IQ boxes in Australia have an RS232 port, but it is not possible to change channel using them, see 'USB Channel Changer' below for an alternative.

If it is activated, you will need a straight through serial cable. These can be obtained from Radio Shack or Ebay easily. Note: This is NOT a null modem cable. A null modem cable swaps several pins making it useless for this purpose.

Enable your serial port in your BIOS. You will need a copy of the serial channel changer binary from the mythtv sources.

Build from source

Fetch the source from http://centerclick.org/programs/dct-channel/

Test it

Place this binary in /usr/local/bin. Test it quickly by running channel. If your serial port isn't the first port, you will have to experiment with the command line switches.

Executing without any arguments should return the current channel number.

After you verify that it works, you will need to add it to your myth configuration. From mythtv-setup, choose the tuner you have configured. For the external channel change script, add:

as well as any paramaters that you determined you needed for other ports. (Make sure the user that runs mythtv-backend is part of the dialout group)

IR Transmitter Channel Changer

Setup LIRC

The general lirc setup page will describe how to setup a lirc transmitter device:

Setup the channel Change Script

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Change-channel-lirc.pl

Alternative Channel Change Script

$ sudo gedit /usr/local/bin/change-channel-lirc.sh

 #!/bin/sh
REMOTE_NAME=dish
irsend SET_TRANSMITTERS 1 #this is the plug on the left when looking at the back of IR receiver, 2 is the other one
irsend --device=/dev/lircd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME select
sleep 0.5
for digit in $(echo $1 | sed -e 's/./& /g'); do
irsend --device=/dev/lircd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME $digit
sleep 0.5
done
irsend --device=/dev/lircd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME select 

Firewire Channel Changer

NOTE: The 6200.ch changer is included in the Ubuntu MythTV packages and is no longer needed for the Motorola 62xx STBs.

If your cable box has a firewire port, it can be used both for capture as well as for changing channels. A small c app is provided in the contrib directory of the mythtv sources. Precompiled binaries are available below; however, for Motorola boxes other than the DCT6200, such as the DCH3200 or the DCT3412, you need to use the newest version of the channel changer which is currently available from the MythTV SVN branch as of 1/08.

Precompiled Binaries

Here are precompiled binaries for i386 and AMD64:

6200ch-i386

6200ch-amd64

Note, you will need to install libraw1394 and libavc1394 for this binary to work.

Compile from Source

If you have a different architecture, then you will need to gather the mythtv-sources and compile the binary yourself.

Test It

Place this binary in /usr/local/bin. The binary by default will use port 0 and node 1. If this isn't the case for you, you will have to provide extra switches to the 6200ch binary.

Test the binary by executing the binary with a channel number.

Verify that the cable box correctly switched channels.

After you verify that it works, you will need to add it to your myth configuration. From mythtv-setup, choose the tuner you have configured. For the external channel change script, add:

as well as any parameters that you determined you needed for other ports.

USB Channel Changer

For Sky/Sky+/SkyHD/Foxtel IQ it is possible to change the channel using their RF2 input port, see http://www.heenan.me.uk/control-sky-from-pc/background.html or http://www.dusky-control.com/.


CategoryVideo

MythTV_External_Channel_Changer (last edited 2011-07-18 17:01:21 by rrcs-24-153-203-178)