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Last night I finished step one in bringing the entertainment system under control.
We have had a Dish Network 4000 receiver for many years. It's been good, but it has one flaw; it uses a UHF remote control. That means there's no universal remote on the planet that works with it. It also means there's no way to control it from a computer or anything else.
That is a pain, because it means a minimum of 2 remotes laying around, and also because that remote is dying.
Anyway, I finally found a rare 56KHz IR receiver module at Electronic Goldmine, and installed it last night. Joy. A bit of fooling around programming, and we have one remote that works for satellite/tv/vcr/DVD/amplifier.
The unfun part was finding that our nice Sony VCR, an editing-capable deck with flying erase head and such, was dead. Took it apart, it's got a broken gear in the head loading mechanism. Not really worth fixing when you can buy its equal for < $100 these days (we paid $500 way back when). So the $69 Samsung came out of the computer editing stack and into the living room. Then I discovered that the Dish IR blaster isn't working; I may have damaged it while doing the IR upfit procedure. I'll look into that later.
Bonus: While messing around programming I found the Discovery Channel running a 2-hour special on SpaceShipOne. Warm up VCR, go to bed.
We have had a Dish Network 4000 receiver for many years. It's been good, but it has one flaw; it uses a UHF remote control. That means there's no universal remote on the planet that works with it. It also means there's no way to control it from a computer or anything else.
That is a pain, because it means a minimum of 2 remotes laying around, and also because that remote is dying.
Anyway, I finally found a rare 56KHz IR receiver module at Electronic Goldmine, and installed it last night. Joy. A bit of fooling around programming, and we have one remote that works for satellite/tv/vcr/DVD/amplifier.
The unfun part was finding that our nice Sony VCR, an editing-capable deck with flying erase head and such, was dead. Took it apart, it's got a broken gear in the head loading mechanism. Not really worth fixing when you can buy its equal for < $100 these days (we paid $500 way back when). So the $69 Samsung came out of the computer editing stack and into the living room. Then I discovered that the Dish IR blaster isn't working; I may have damaged it while doing the IR upfit procedure. I'll look into that later.
Bonus: While messing around programming I found the Discovery Channel running a 2-hour special on SpaceShipOne. Warm up VCR, go to bed.
