External Receiver (Digital Cable Box)?

Just wondering if Media Portl supports external receivers or cable boxes. I have a PVR 250 but I dont' use the internal tuner; I use SVIDEO connected to an external digital cable box. I must use the digital box to get channels above 200, and many of the channels I record are above the analog range.

I currently use SnapStream BeyondTV and I'd be happy to get away from it. BTV has built-in support for the USB UIRT (http://www.usbuirt.com/) as well as other IR blasters for this purpose. Just wondering if there is support or planned support for changing channels externally.

Regards,

eXe

P.S. Sorry for the subject change, I don't think the old one made sense.

[rusten]

I agree with the above poster.

Based on AV forums, it appears the most common receiver used with PVR devices stands as the Satellite Receiver.

I personally use a DirecTV DVR (DTV w/integrated Tivo); however, I would prefer to eventually go entirely with XBMC as endpoints and a MediaPortal as the centerpiece PVR.

In the case of DirecTV, there is a serial command set that works similar to an IR blaster. BeyondTV (mentioned by the above poster) also supports this serial command set.

This should also go in the "Feature Request" section, because I'm essentially suggesting the tremendous value of integration this serial communication to control DirecTV boxes.

If the official developers need a DirecTV box to test this, I would be willing to donate one.

Thank you in advance,
-Rusten

I would also love to see this! I'm using the usb-uirt right now to control my Bell expressvu sat box. It works great under gbpvr or sagetv.

Since you have all answered my question that this is currently *not* supported, can an administrator please move this to the "Feature Request" forum?

I was able to obtain the full SDK for the USB-UIRT. It doesn't look too terrible, it's a Pascal exported C DLL with about 8 functions. IR codes are actually stored and played back as strings (char pointers). The DLL shouldn't be too terrible to wrap up in a managed wrapper. I even got the C# source from CVS and looked at where it could be implemented.

My suggestion would be to make an ITuner interface that has the same methods and properties as the Tuner class in the DirectX.Capture module. Then, TVCaptureDevice in the TVCapture namespace would hold a reference to the ITunder interface rather then the Tuner class. A plugin for any tuner would then simply implement the ITuner interface. The only trick would be changing the TVCaptureDevice class to obtain the plugin rather then the actual capture devices tuner (if that's what the user setup in the configuration screen).

Finally, the capture device configuration screen would have to allow the choice of a tuner plugin, and there would have to be a button to configure the plugin. In the case of the USB-UIRT, it would be a dialog that would let the plugin "Learn" from the users remote which buttons they wanted to use to perform which functions.

All in all, it's certainly doable. I could easily contribute some code for enumerating and loading plugins (I do this all day at work). I might even be able to port the USB-UIRT DLL into C# and make a nice wrapper around it. I could POSSIBLY even go so far as to make the configuration screen and the interface. But I'm not promising anything because I'm already working 10 hour days right now. The only part I would deffinately NOT want to do would be merging it all in (especially touching the TVCaptureDevice class). I see how it persists its configuration using automatic serialization and the class is a little hairy. I wouldn't want to get down and dirty in there.

If one of the devs would like to work with me on this, I can see if I can set some time aside. But no promises. Really, weekend time is about all I have and even that is limited right now. That may change in a few months...

Real quick, since I'm in the habbit of replying to my own thread, I figured I would mention one more thing:

It looks like it would be much better to attack the external tuner problem via Girder. Here are two articles on SnapStream using Girder as a 'Tuner':

http://kb.snapstream.com/Kb.aspx?kbid=1131
http://www.ubiqsoft.com/snapstream/s...AndDct2000.htm

There are others.

The implementation that I mentioned before could still be the same inside MediaPortal, only the plugin would change. I don't know how to interface to Girder (i.e. perform the functionality that SSGirderTuner appears to), but doing so would provide the use of the following external blasters (with more added often):

IRTransceiver
RedRat2
SlinkE
Tira
RCA DirectTV Receiver
UIRT
USB UIRT

There is another app (not as popular) called HE Remote (http://www.tvscheduler.net/download.html) that could also allow the use of the following:

Actisys IR200L
PC to IR Linc
IRdeo
Spitfire

Just thinking out loud again...

eXentric did you try to create a manage wrapper from the usb-uirt sdk?

I need usb-uirt suppot also.

Interested to see how far have you gotten?

eXentric did you try to create a manage wrapper from the usb-uirt sdk?

I need usb-uirt suppot also.

Interested to see how far have you gotten?

No, I haven't done anything. I've been waiting to see if one of the developers would be willing to work with me to complete this - I'm not sure I'm ready to do the whole thing on my own. At least not the integration part...

It doesn't seem like there is much interest in this feature after all. I'm kinda surprised. I guess all MediaPortal users right now just use the onboard tuner.

[usbrit]

I need it too, Dish network box, but I don't have the expertise to help.
Sorry
usbrit