Comcast Fix
I would way rather be in Vegas this weekend then stuck at work :( Oh well, my cousin's wedding is Saturday so its not like I could go even I could afford to :/ I've spent the past couple of hours cleaning camera lenses, charging batteries, formating memory cards, etc. 10 gigabytes worth of SD cards should be enough for one day right? :)
Also, I think I've worked out a solution to my Comcast/dvr issue that doesn't involving blowing $80 on parts. It does however involve tape:
Apparently I'm out of duct tape, I guess I used up the last of it when I last wrapped gifts. I'll have to get more soon, I'm not sure how well scotch tape will hold :/ Basically, the black thing on the left is an IR receiver, which plugs into the back of the comcast cable box. The idea behind it (from comcast's perspective) is that instead of having an ugly looking box next to your tv you can instead hide the box somewhere behind the tv and then affix that little back thing to the front on the tv/tv stand. Then, instead of pointing the tv remote at the cable box, you point it at the little black thing and it relays the signal to the box. Except instead of placing it where a tv remote could use it, I've taped an IR transmitter onto the front of it (the black thing on the right). The IR transmitter allows the computer to send IR codes, basically making it one big tv remote. This setup then allows me to either manually set a channel using the computer's tv remote (which transmits the signal to the computer via RF) or automatically change the channel when the DVR software wants to record stuff. Either method causes the computer to send "comcast tv remote" formatted IR commands over its IR transmitter, which is then seen by the comcast IR receiver and used to change the channel. On the down side, this who convoluted process means it takes about 10 seconds for the channel to actually change :/ It took me about a half hour to figure out how and then to copy the IR commands off of the comcast tv remote and onto my computer, but it seams to be working. Although now the time I've spent hooking all of this up is significantly more then the time I've spent watching tv all month :(
Also, I think I've worked out a solution to my Comcast/dvr issue that doesn't involving blowing $80 on parts. It does however involve tape:
Apparently I'm out of duct tape, I guess I used up the last of it when I last wrapped gifts. I'll have to get more soon, I'm not sure how well scotch tape will hold :/ Basically, the black thing on the left is an IR receiver, which plugs into the back of the comcast cable box. The idea behind it (from comcast's perspective) is that instead of having an ugly looking box next to your tv you can instead hide the box somewhere behind the tv and then affix that little back thing to the front on the tv/tv stand. Then, instead of pointing the tv remote at the cable box, you point it at the little black thing and it relays the signal to the box. Except instead of placing it where a tv remote could use it, I've taped an IR transmitter onto the front of it (the black thing on the right). The IR transmitter allows the computer to send IR codes, basically making it one big tv remote. This setup then allows me to either manually set a channel using the computer's tv remote (which transmits the signal to the computer via RF) or automatically change the channel when the DVR software wants to record stuff. Either method causes the computer to send "comcast tv remote" formatted IR commands over its IR transmitter, which is then seen by the comcast IR receiver and used to change the channel. On the down side, this who convoluted process means it takes about 10 seconds for the channel to actually change :/ It took me about a half hour to figure out how and then to copy the IR commands off of the comcast tv remote and onto my computer, but it seams to be working. Although now the time I've spent hooking all of this up is significantly more then the time I've spent watching tv all month :(