DirecTV - sending a dash '-' via Sage?

[phelme]

DirecTV, with their new HD lineup, has a few channels that are actually subchannels and require sending a '-' to get to them (i.e. FoodTV HD 231-1, HGTV HD 229-1 etc.). I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here, but I'm having trouble sending that '-'. I'm trying to do it via HIP, but the SageTV network encoder service I'm sending to stops working once I try to send the '-' and has to be restarted to receive any more channel changing commands.

Someone must have figured out the subchannel thing already. Help?!?

[phelme]

well I got HIP to work, I can send "231-1" no problem via HIPWSend on the network encoder PC. but I can't get SageTV to tune it. I remapped the physical channel to "231-1" for FoodHD but nothing happens on the encoder when I try to select that channel (it works fine for other channels without the '-')

anyone have any ideas?

[davephan]

Did you try using IRHelper to help you figure out the code needed to send a dash? Try sending a dash with your normal remote control using IRHelper. Then you may be able to find out the code to use in your IR file.

Dave

[phelme]

Hmmm. I can send the entire string "231-1" locally using HIPWSend's GUI interface and the DirecTV box responds OK. The IR code that I programmed into HIP works just fine. After playing some more with HIP and the command line, the problem seems to be the construction of the command line itself. HIP doesn't want seem to want to let me allow for padding *and* have a dash at the some time.

Does Sage send the dash ('-') across to the network encoder as a dash or do I need to make that some sort of remote code in the physical channel for the source?

has anyone got the dash '-' for a subchannel to work with HIP?

Originally Posted by davephan

Did you try using IRHelper to help you figure out the code needed to send a dash? Try sending a dash with your normal remote control using IRHelper. Then you may be able to find out the code to use in your IR file.

Dave

[phelme]

I'm struggling with being able to send a dash "-" to my DirecTV receiver to access HD subchannels like FoodTV's 231-1 via Sage and an IR blaster. Will Sage send the dash to the plugin if it's part of the physical channel mapping? I figured I should at least see if this is possible before going any further with this.

So far I've tried HIP and LM Remote KeyMap with no luck. HIP's author says dashes aren't handled well on the command line and LM Remote KeyMap currently crashes for me.

[Narflex]

SageTV can handle dashes in the channel numbers. It'll pass them through to the IR tuning plugin as a separate command. So if the channel is set to be "34-2" and you're using the USB-UIRT or Actisys then it'll send 3, 4, -, 2. For other tuning plugins that send the command in one shot (like the EXETunerPlugin or Hauppauge IR Blaster on Windows) those won't handle dashes correctly because it tries to convert it to an integer first before it sends it to the plugin.

[phelme]

so basically there is no way around this unless I get USB-UIRT's to drive the receivers?

Originally Posted by Narflex

SageTV can handle dashes in the channel numbers. It'll pass them through to the IR tuning plugin as a separate command. So if the channel is set to be "34-2" and you're using the USB-UIRT or Actisys then it'll send 3, 4, -, 2. For other tuning plugins that send the command in one shot (like the EXETunerPlugin or Hauppauge IR Blaster on Windows) those won't handle dashes correctly because it tries to convert it to an integer first before it sends it to the plugin.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Narflex

For other tuning plugins that send the command in one shot those won't handle dashes correctly because it tries to convert it to an integer first before it sends it to the plugin.

When you say "it tries". You mean that this is SageTV that converts the channel to a number (DWORD if I remember correctly).

Would it be possible to extend the tuning API to add these functions :

TUNERSTUBDLL_API bool CanMacroTuneEx(void);
TUNERSTUBDLL_API void MacroTuneEx(unsigned char);

instead of only

TUNERSTUBDLL_API bool CanMacroTune(void);
TUNERSTUBDLL_API void MacroTune(int);

this should resolve the issue.

Regards,
Stéphane.