Media Center and DirecTV: Is it worth it? (1 Viewer)

[schwim]

Hi there everyone,

I put a box together that I was going to play around with as a media center. After putting some thought into it, I realized that DirecTV requires all of the channel changing goodness to happen at it's decoder.

Before you bash me for not searching the site, I found this plugin(DirecTV Tune), but I have three potential problems with this:

1) Even after it's brief description, I don't know what it's supposed to do Can I handle all parts of the decoder management through the media center?

2) It states that it hooks up through a serial port, but my decoder box doesn't have a serial port, just phone jack, rca and s-video jacks.

3) It seems to be unmaintained.

So, I'm wondering if I'll end up with a media center that is nothing more than a glorified VCR in regards to dealing with DirecTV.

I know I can use it for audio, and that makes me smile, but it would be nice do do the same for television.

Any success stories/gripes concerning it's use with D-TV would be appreciated.

thanks,
json

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

I put a box together that I was going to play around with as a media center. After putting some thought into it, I realized that DirecTV requires all of the channel changing goodness to happen at it's decoder

If this is remote controlled, a blaster from a mce remote may be of more use now, just a thought if no more constructive info comes your way.

 

[garry]

I've been using MediaPortal with DirecTV for more than a year. I originally write the DirecTV Tuner plugin and am now running TV3 (the client/server version of MediaPortal) and wrote a similar plugin for the TV Server. It basically tells your DirecTV box(es) to tune to chanel X when you select channel X in the MediaPortal TV guide.

Some DirecTV receivers have a serial port that is not a regular DB9 connector. See http://www.dtvcontrol.com/page.aspx?content=compat for some (outdated) details. There are also some receivers that have a USB port, there is a USB to serial adapter that can be used with some of them. What model receiver(s) do you have?