[mythtv-users] Cable box always on

[Preston Crow]

On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 09:56 -0700, Steve Peters - Priority Electronics
wrote:
> But what happens if the channel that the cable box was tuned into goes
> off
> the air for a few hours in the middle of the night? That happens with
> some
> of the smaller stations.

I think the ideal behavior would be for Myth to realize that it's about
to record something through a tuner with an external channel change
command, and if the tuner is not already in use, then send the channel
change command two minutes early, with an environment variable
specifying the number of seconds before recording should start.

Then the script could check for audio, tune to a different channel that
is expected to always have audio or video activity, send the power
toggle, and repeat several times if necessary to be sure it has the box
on.

It would also be nice for Myth to have the option to run a script when
it isn't planning on using the cable box for at least an hour, so it
could be shut off (if it makes a difference).

This would get complicated when using the same tuner for analog (coax)
channels and digital (cable box) channels with back-to-back recordings
where the first is analog and the second is digital.