Using 1 IR Blaster on a 3 tuner System

[reggie14]

Now that I get some premium channels I want to start recording standard-definition TV through the cable box, rather than just recording the analog channels directly off the line. Right now I have an HVR-1600 and a PVR-250. I want to hook the analog portion of the HVR-1600 to the cable box, and control it with the Hauppauge IR blaster. Then I want to just keep using the PVR-250 to tune and record analog channels directly.

However, I'm troubled by this note in the SageTV manual:

Notes: Due to Hauppauge driver limitations, multiple blasters can not be used. In addition, it may not be possible to use the blaster if there are multiple encoders and only one has a blaster. (emphasis added) SageTV does not use the MCE IR blaster portion of the Hauppauge MCE kits, which come with the MCE remote + blaster.

Am I going to have problems since I only want to use the IR blaster to control one of the 3 tuners on the system (I record QAM with the 1600 too)? Or, is this only a warning for people with a PVR-500 that only want to use the IR blaster with one of the two encoders on that board?

[agover]

You dont actually have 3 tuners - you have 2. In either case even if you have 2 ir blasters its irrelevant - as long as only one is configured you'll be fine.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by agover

You dont actually have 3 tuners - you have 2. In either case even if you have 2 ir blasters its irrelevant - as long as only one is configured you'll be fine.

I think by most definitions I have 3 tuners (counting the HVR-1600 as two), but only two encoders.

Do you know what the note in the manual is referring to? I'm guessing my proposed set-up will work fine though. I know there are other people on here that use a combination of set-top boxes and direct recording, but I don't know if those people are using the Hauppauge IR blaster or USB-IRT.

[GKusnick]

Just guessing here, since I don't have a Hauppauge blaster. But my guess would be that the Hauppauge blaster driver works only with the first Hauppauge capture device it detects. If that first device happens not to support the blaster, then the blaster won't be used even if the second device does support it. "First" and "second" here probably have something to do with PCI slot order, so if it doesn't work you could try juggling cards around to see if you can find a combo that does work.

Again, this is all guesswork on my part, but that's what I'd take it mean.

[reggie14]

Thanks GKusnick. That sounds plausible. So, there's probably a 50/50 chance that it will decide to work with my HVR-1600. It probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if I had to use the PVR-250 to capture video off the box.

I think I'm going to buy a USB-UIRT, and that would fix this problem. I don't have much hope that Comcast will be putting the expanded basic lineup into the QAM channels, so I'm going to need to get used to using IR blasters (or firewire).

[clip]

I recently did some thinking about this because I have two hauppauge recorders and I determined that it wasn't consistently choosing the same device to send the ir codes through.

In my case, I was able to change a registry setting to "prefer" a USB device. But if that hadn't worked I would've tried pointing both my ir blasters at the same STB, that way, no matter which blaster was selected the STB would get the commands.