[Tfug] Local source for IR blaster? Also, cable nonsense.

[John Gruenenfelder]

Greetings,

Does anybody know of a local source for an IR blaster?  I need one for my
Mythbox so I can change channels on the digital cable settop box.  I could
order one, but it's a simple device and I'd rather get one locally over the
weekend rather than wait.  I'd prefer a simple USB device over a
serial/parallel one since those ports are vanishing on many newer machines.


As an aside... am I the only one who thought that the digital in "digital
cable" meant that all of the channels flowing to the box are MPEG2 streams?  I
had the bright idea to get a STB with a firewire port so that I could just
grab the MPEG2 from the box rather than go digital->analog->digital via my
current MPEG2 encoder card.

But... it didn't work at all.  The box is a Scientific Atlanta 4240HDC and
it's diagnostic pages seem to indicate that the firewire ports are completely
disabled.  A phone call to Cox also confirmed this despite FCC regulations
(now in effect for over four years) that the cable company must provide upon
request a box with functional firewire ports.

After some more cursing, I tried it with the KMSB digital feed (channel 711)
and, lo! it works.  It even dumped the data to an MPEG2 on the disk.

But, this seems mostly useless to me.  I'm not paying for HD service.  And it
now seems that "digital" cable channels that are non-HD are still delivered as
analog streams and I must continue to use my MPEG2 encoder to use them.  For
the handful of local digital streams, I can grab them, and only them, with
firewire.

So, I've wasted a few evenings on this only to learn that I'll be doing almost
exactly what I was before.  Just grabbing the cable output via an S-video plug
and into the MPEG2 encoder and skipping firewire altogether since it's only
useful for a tiny number of channels (slightly more if I pay for HD service).
Boo...  Plus now I need the IR blaster to change channels since I won't be
doing that with the firewire port.  :(


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
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