Control Sage TV/Recorded with Laptop IR port and Remote-- Possible?

[Jim S.]

This should be a nice, long winded question-- I've got SageTV up and running on an old P3 with the Hauppage capture card, and that all works great, but it means I need to watch the files sitting at my computer desk, or do some serious playing around to get the signal onto the real TV.

However, my laptop has got a good TV out function that will allow me to play the video files back on a real tv-- the only problem now is that I need to grab a mouse to skip the commercials.

So my thinking is that it should be possible to install SageRecorder onto my laptop, and have it look at the IR port on there to capture the commands from my remote contol.

Has anyone done this yet? Any idea on what it would take to make this happen?

[olyar15]

While this is theoretically possible, remember that the laptop Ir port is designed for IrDA, not consumer IR signals like you get from the remote control. I have heard some people successfully hack a workaround, I think it is far easier to get your regular computer hooked up to your TV. If your TV is an HDTV, you can get a VGA to Component transcoder. Or upgrade your video card with one that has S-Vidoe out.

Then get an IR receiver for the computer, like the IRMan, so you can use a remote control to control SageTV.

What you will eventually end up with is an HTPC (Home Theater PC). Check out http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ there is a forum just fo HTPC and you will find a wealth of info.

[Jim S.]

Hooking the PC with all the goodies up to the TV would mean either physically moving the box, running a lot of cable into the next room, or hooking up my X10 stuff to wirelessly send the signal, then I would need another IR replicator to send the remote commands back to the PC-- all rather messy, and I wout have to use another program since Sage doesn't support the video out line on the Hauppage 350 yet... Hence the hope for a hack :)

I suppose I could always drop the actisys thing on there and go that route, I just hate to spend any more money...

[JJarmoc]

"Sage doesn't support the video out line on the Hauppage 350 yet"

The newest beta does, though I haven't tried it.