USB-UIRT channel tuning

[ericscottf]

So it seems that the friendly folks at fios have made it so cable boxes shut off really really frequently now. Can't find a menu setting for auto-power off, so i don't think it is some kind of "green" initiative...

I'm currently using stbkeepalive to key in a turn-on-only button sequence twice a day, but i'm missing a lot of shows.

How do i modify sagetv to prepend two keys (named and stored in the .IR file) to each and every channel change?

I didn't want to have to waste even more time tuning, but they leave me little choice.

Even weirder: Two cable boxes i got at the same time, plugged into the same power and cable line, same model, same everything -- don't always wind up off together. That makes me think something else is going on, but i don't know what it could be. I've verified that stbkeepalive does indeed properly turn on both boxes, so i don't know....

any ideas?

[stanger89]

You can learn new key codes and assign a tuning prefix in the Source configuration.

[paulbeers]

Yep what he said. My Dish Network boxes go thru an update every night at 3:00. Rather than mess around with a timer, I just appended the "select" key using the prefix option in the USB UIRT setup to all codes that are sent to my cable boxes. This ensures that I never miss a show.

Here are two questions though: 1. are they shut down or reset? 2. if they are shut down, how long does it take for them to power up?

[ericscottf]

They're just "off". The really infuriating part is that they're still outputting a signal, an image that says "Your cable box is off. press menu to turn it on or turn off your TV".

Why? Why, verizon, why? I wonder if the power draw differs between "off" and "on".

I don't recall seeing the setting for prepending buttons to the UIRT in sage, but i'll check again when i'm near the comp.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by ericscottf

They're just "off". The really infuriating part is that they're still outputting a signal, an image that says "Your cable box is off. press menu to turn it on or turn off your TV".

Why? Why, verizon, why? I wonder if the power draw differs between "off" and "on".

I don't recall seeing the setting for prepending buttons to the UIRT in sage, but i'll check again when i'm near the comp.

There actually might be a logical reason why Verizon would want to do this. I suspect it is to conserve bandwidth. With traditional cable every station is sent out simultaneously to every connected TV, whether you are watching or not. With Switched Digital TV (which I think is what FIOS and a few cable companies are using), your set-top box requests a particular feed, and they only have to send the program you are actually watching. So, it would make sense that if you aren't actually watching anything, it would be best for them if they didn't have to send anything.

[ericscottf]

I don't think so, here's why:

1) the boxes seem to power off randomly, not at steady increments.
2) i don't think fios is SD. no proof there though.

If that were the case, then, they should make it so that changing a channel instantly powers the box back on and tunes the channel without losing a digit. That would be the polite thing to do.

Just assembled a light/fan combo device which plugs into two cable boxes at the same time. If either one loses power, the light goes out and the fan stops blowing. Gonna point the fan at the HD-PVRs for good measure (though i've never had a problem).
Between this and a much more aggressive STBkeepalive schedule (several times a day now instead of twice), i should be recording more.

If it is still no good, i'll either cobble together some software that can pattern-match on the "off" screen and have it auto-detect that a show is not tuned or i'll do 120v from the cable box into a USB digital IO device that will tell my comp that a box turned off. Either one of those is a day long or more of a project, so I'm hoping to avoid it....