Disabling Creative DVCR Remote

[pbarrette]

Hello all,

I've finally decided to transition to myHTPC + Girder + SageTV instead of just SageTV because of myHTPC's better and more customizable interface.

That being said, I'm having problems with the responsiveness of Girder when SageTV is running. If SageTV is not running, my Girder events work just fine. I can tap the remote button in the application I have configured and it does exactly what I have assigned it to do.

But, if SageTV is running, I have to hold the remote button down longer and sometimes hit it twice to get Girder to respond, regardless of the application that I am working in.

This leads me to believe that SageTV is initializing the DVCR's IR reciever and intercepting some of the signals before Girder has a chance to see them.

I have unlinked all of the remote codes from SageTV, but this is still happening. Since support for the DVCR remote seems to be native to Sage and there are no setup options for it, I have no way to tell Sage that it shouldn't use the DVCR IR reciever.

Narflex, how do I prevent SageTV from initializing the IR hardware and stealing the signals away from Girder?

pb

[Narflex]

Can't do it at the present time unfortunately.

[pbarrette]

Hi Narflex, all,

I've done it. I have successfully stopped SageTV from polling the DVCR remote hardware.

After revisiting the forum at www.x-epg.net I found the post which states that the remote is accessed via the tar device found at 0x22208. So, I fired up my trusty hex editor, searced Sage.dll for a "push" to 08 20 22 (since address calls always start last hex pair first), then replaced the sequence with 00 00 00.

I can only assume that SageTV is now attempting to poll a non-existent device which results in an error, but SageTV is handling the error quietly and happily. I don't even see any anomalous messages in the log files.

Unfortunately, the modification seems to be version specific due to the offset shifting with different versions of the Sage.dll file. For the current release version 1.4.10, the offset start seems to be "0000F896" while the beta I am currently using shows an offset of "0000F245". On the up side, the address doesn't seem to be repeated elsewhere in the file, so a simple search and replace would likely serve just fine.

Of course, if anyone else attempts this, please be sure to make a backup copy of Sage.dll in the case that your experience differs from mine and you discover that Sage has stopped working. Also, a backup copy will be needed if you decide to ditch your 3rd party DVCR remote software (like Girder) and go back to Sage's native DVCR remote support.

I can report that after making the change, Girder commands are much more responsive.

pb

ps. Sorry Narflex, I just couldn't wait for the eventual option to disable the remote.