DVR/STB remote signal Handling

ross_f

So I was told yesterday that all the Verizon FIOS motorola products operate with the same set of signals. There are no identifiers in the IR signal (for your conveience). My problem is that I have a whole house setup with an IR relay system as I would like to be able to switch between the dvr box and stb in any room to watch the one that is not being used, or to easily setup recordings on the DVR, then switch the the STB to view something else. Since I have an IR relay system which is transferring from whichever room I am in to the boxes I end up controlling both of them at the same time via either remote, while only viewing one of the boxes. This is how I accidentally ordered movies on a STB that no one was watching while selecting some alternate content on my DVR box).

Are there no products or settings in the IR signal that can be adjusted to make the signal unique? I can only figure a few solutions. Would a Cable Card operate off the same remote control signals? My only other solution was to use a universal remote and create a set of signals/commands to uniquely identify each box independently, send the signal to my PC first, process it with Eventghost and rebroadcast out the signal depending upon the box it is meant for, sending the signal directly to that individual box.

Ideas/Solutions?

PJL

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@ross_f wrote:

So I was told yesterday that all the Verizon FIOS motorola products operate with the same set of signals. There are no identifiers in the IR signal (for your conveience). My problem is that I have a whole house setup with an IR relay system as I would like to be able to switch between the dvr box and stb in any room to watch the one that is not being used, or to easily setup recordings on the DVR, then switch the the STB to view something else. Since I have an IR relay system which is transferring from whichever room I am in to the boxes I end up controlling both of them at the same time via either remote, while only viewing one of the boxes. This is how I accidentally ordered movies on a STB that no one was watching while selecting some alternate content on my DVR box).

Are there no products or settings in the IR signal that can be adjusted to make the signal unique? I can only figure a few solutions. Would a Cable Card operate off the same remote control signals? My only other solution was to use a universal remote and create a set of signals/commands to uniquely identify each box independently, send the signal to my PC first, process it with Eventghost and rebroadcast out the signal depending upon the box it is meant for, sending the signal directly to that individual box.

Ideas/Solutions?

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There is no way to make the FiOS signals unique (addressed to) a specific STB. A cable card solution would use a different device than a Verizon STB, so this would solve your issue. I'm not sure how you can can create a unique set of signals/command with a universal remote. I have the Harmony 650 (which is a pretty advance model) and just looked at the programming capabilities. You can teach it IR commands, but there doesn't seem to be any way to add a unique identifier or modify an existing non-unique IR signal.

The only solution I see is to use a different receiver function with a cable card.

P.S. It would be great if you could set an IR address for a given STB and set a remote to that same address (like DirecTV I recall), but that's unlikely to ever happen. The STB software might be able to implement this function, but with millions of remotes in the field that can't be updated via software, it would be hard to do, and I don't know what motivation Verizon would have to do it. The STB would have to be smart enough to recognize the old remotes and the new news one with the addressable function -- complex, but possible. And the new remotes would have to be developed and made available.