[mythtv-users] DirecTV H20-100 receiver channel changing not working.

Taco Mel taco_mel at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 7 17:42:32 UTC 2007


Kevin,

I recently hooked up a new HD20-100 to the serial port
and got it working correctly.  Here are a few hints
for you.

Do you know that the USB-Serial converter that you are
plugging into the box is supported?  Your converter
might work spectacularly under linux but not with your
DirecTV receiver.

I had purchased two different types of USB-Serial
converters for my setup, one for plugging into the
DirecTV box and one for plugging into my computer. 
Both worked great with my computer but only one worked
in the DirecTV box.  I knew this before I bought, as
the one for the DirecTV box was more expensive.  

Here is the one I am using, which works for both my
HD20 and D11 for $15:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812107108

And here is one that does not work, at least in my
testing.  The green light comes on, on the cable, but
I could not get it to work at all.  (Of course this
does a great job of adding a serial port to my
computer, which I needed.)  This one was $9:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812156008a

By the way, at the time of this writing the first
reviews that mention DirecTV are mine.

One thing I found is that the directv.pl script linked
from the wiki did not seem to parse the command line
arguments correctly.  No matter what I set as my baud
rate on the command line when it got to the point
where it set up the serial connection, it was always
the hardcoded value.  So I got a newer version of the
script here:

http://www.pdp8.net/directv/directv.shtml

Before messing around with the script at all, I got it
working via minicom.  A bunch of times it was just
dead but one time I hit enter and saw a couple of "{"
returned, and that's when I knew we were good.

The only thing is that the directv.pl script above
does not, on the H20, hide the menu right away.  It
works beautifully on the D11 with no command line
arguments except of course for your serial port and
the desired channel.  I'm probably just missing an
argument for the H20 or something, but thus far I have
not had the time to look into this.

Hope this helps...

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