Comcast...Motorola HD DCT 34XX or 64XX

[noshali]

Hi,

Anyone using one of the above with CQC?

If so, the please advise on your setup.

Thanks

[zaccari]

I have several DCT64XX dual tuner HD/DVR boxes. In fact, the reason I headed down this road is that I have too many of these boxes (3 plus another GI box that isn't DVR) and I'm tired of paying extra each month. My goal is to take 2 of these boxes and pipe them through the whole house (with something like the B&K CT602). I started researching the DVR boxes over the weekend and there really isn't a lot of information out there (some of the other Motorola boxes have serial ports but they appear to have reduced the size and removed that port). These boxes do not have serial ports. They do have USB (a USB A receptacle) so I'm assuming that's for plugging in, not to plug the box into something. They also have an ethernet jack. Again, I'm not hopeful on that front. I found references to folks using firewire to copy video to WinXP.

I did find a reference to a "FireSTB" project which quote " toss my IR emitters back behind the MCE box and get back into reliable firewire channel changing and HD digital recording." I didn't think 1394 allowed that but I'm going to spend more time exploring this.

More later.

[zaccari]

Ok, I went to look at the ports on my DCT6412 again. Below are pictures of those ports. I see the following:
Audio IN and OUT
PFDIF
Composite Video IN and OUT
Component Video
SVideo
Optical
Firewire
USB A
Ethernet
DVD-D Out
IR

Sorry about the lack of depth of field. It sure would have made things clearer. For those really interested, I linked the smaller images to the biggy pics so you can click through.

[zaccari]

The original post about FireSTB from the AVS Forums and can be found here.

[noshali]

There are 2 things that I want to pursue with these boxes.

One control and the other to record to a PC rather than the HDD directly. The reason for the recording is that the onboard HDD takes up a lot of space for recordings. I recorded 5 HD 1 hour programs and my HDD went to 34% USED.

So many things to do...such little time and money.

regards,

[zaccari]

Well, from reading the stuff I posted, the Firewire connection (if enabled on your box) definitely allows you to capture.

As for control, I see that in several levels. I want to be able to not only change the channel but I want to be able to see what is playing. The FireSTB apparently does at least channel control. I don't know about the rest. I imagine you can use Windows XP MCE to do your recording, since that was one of the hot topics. I would rather use anything but MCE.

[jkmonroe]

My $.02. I have used this successfully with MCE. From my understanding, it is specifically designed for media center and will not easily work with other programs. I have been meaning to play with using CQC but havent had the chance. There is a command line app to let you change the channels that should hopefully let you use the app server to control. There is no 2-way that I am familiar with.

[noshali]

Since it does not have 2 way...then we don't have a choice but to either use IR or MCE.

Loud Thinking:
I think that with IR (UIRT) at least there is a possibility of get feedback. VERY time consuming and half baked.
The only way we will change channels or operate the box is by using the remote. Using CQC will go by what we press. Receiver code will need to be programmed in the UIRT with the same commands so that lets say "Info" is pressed the Info on the monitor lights up as the IR will be received by both the box and the UIRT. How would we do do multiple commands like if 1 8 9 is pressed then change it to HBO???? I know some folks use the ocelot in a loop to do the same.

Like I said this could be a pain...or maybe not work at all.

Here are some useful links
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_use_a_Motorola_DVR

Firewire
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_...a_DVR/Firewire

This one looks simple enough
http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/dct6412/

regards,

[jkmonroe]

thats not entirely true. you can use firewire for channel changing with a command line app. it would make it much more reliable than IR.

check out the direct link to the guy who wrote the program. there is a section specifically about installing on non-mce machines, you just cant use a non-mce machine to *easily* capture recordings.

http://home.comcast.net/~timmmoore/firewire/readme.htm

as far as 2-way IR control, your guess is probably better than mine.

[noshali]

Weird thing....my ethernet port on the diagnostics page say that the port is enabled. I don't think that it does anything. The HDMI port is disabled and that is a shock.

regards,