Thinking of going with a (Comcast) digital STB

[AWS]

Ok, I'm moving and considering "upgrading" to Comcast's digital service but unfortunatly it forces me to use a STB. So far I've been able to get past having to use it and therefor having the luxury of skipping having a blaster and package remote (been using the 34 button Hauppauge remote that came with the 350). But for only $5 I can get the digital service with more channels. So in order to do this, I will need to get a STB for each tuner I have in my system, figure out what blaster package to get, what remote to get, etc. I was thinking of going with an iMon package...one of the many.

Do I just contact them and ask for an additional IR blaster or what? I assume it's just a USB device attached to a long cable that I stick in front of the IR port on the STB, right? Then I tell Sage that I'm no longer using the Hauppauge remote? Thanks

[src666]

I have a 5 tuner Sage system, but only one cable box hooked up to the system. I found that 95+% of my recording/watching occurs on the analog side - I mainly have the cable box hooked up to record the SciFi channel. I still get to watch whatever I want anytime I want, unless it conflicts with SciFriday. If I found myself hitting more conflicts, I would add another cable box.

Figure out what you need the digital cable for, and how much you will actually be watching the digital tier, as opposed to the analog tier. You may find that you don't need that many cable boxes.

Also, when you set it up, make sure you remove all of the analog channels from the lineup that your cable boxes use. That way Sage will never try to use them when recording stuff that the other tuners can handle, and reserve them just for the digital stuff.