[mythtv-users] Cable box always on

[Daniel Arfsten]

>> . As for serial, I'll have to check that
>> out, but my mythbox has only 1 serial port which is being used for IR
>> blasting my sound equipment. Not sure if usb to serial adapters would work
>> in this case, but it would be interesting to find out.

 
>It does work.  I use two USB->Serial cables with the Prolific PL2303 chip to
>control two SD digital cable boxes.
 
>If your STB doesn't have a serial port, you may be able to take it into your
>cable companies office and exchange it there.I just went through this with my SA3250HD cable box from Time Warner Cable. This guy wrote up an awesome tutorial for actually capturing some video from the cable box as an .mpg file, then using a program to convert the mpg file into little jpegs, then another program converts the jpeg's to asci characters and if the image contains too many of a certain letter, then you know the cable is off and the image was black. if that's the case, then the channel change command will send a power on before it attempts to change the channel. It all happens in less than 2 seconds. I haven't missed a recording ever since incorporating this awesome little script. Here's the details.

http://evuraan.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-ensure-set-top-box-stb-is.html

Daniel 
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