Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Link: http://www.zektor.com/hdvi5/HDVI5.html

One of the things I had grumbled about was now having to switch inputs on my Zektor HDVI5 more often than usual.

Namely, going between my two TiVo HD's. The other two devices, my DVD player and the Cox HD DVR, were getting little use. Like, I'm only watching on DVD a weekend...if that. And, right now I check the Cox HD DVR now and then to remove stuff it has recorded, because it is duplicating stuff that I'm now getting on my TiVo (one of the them anyways). I originally scheduled the shows because I wasn't able to get them via Cablecards, but Cox has since made all the HD channels here available that way.

I could remove the scheduling I suppose, but that's more time on the box than I want. Perhaps sometime before the start of the fall season, I'll sit down and figure out the distribution of what I record where. Kind of like the spread of channels over the many ReplayTVs I've been using.

Should be interesting to see what my ReplayTV usage becomes in the fall.

Anyways...back to what input switching problem, it dawned on that I can reprogram the switcher to select the input based on a different remote. Though I didn't want to change all the buttons, and there didn't seem to be a way to cycle through inputs...so I hadn't looked much further.

It then occurred me that I could temporarily juggle remotes to program so just input 1 and input 2 are triggered by some other IR code, that corresponds to the respective TiVo HD's. Better yet, while checking the manual...I can only change the IR codes that I want.

So, I mapped the TiVo button of #1 to input 1, and the TiVo button of #2 to input 2. Sure, the switcher is going to reselect the input every time I hit the TiVo button. But, it seemed a safe button that would switch inputs without disrupting things on that TiVo.

Especially, since it is preference to hit the TiVo button for the input I'm going to before I switch to the input. That way I won't get blasted by whatever Live TV that the TiVo might be playing.

At some later date, I'll probably think of what button on the other devices (Cox HD DVR and Momitsu V880N DVD player) to be the input selection for that. But, back to my TiVo viewing.

Follow up:

I forgot that there's already a future problem with inputs....namely there only being one DVI input left. At one time I was planning to get the Netflix player, but currently it isn't HD (plus I'd probably have to upgrade my DSL service) and it also doesn't do subtitles (or closed captions). And, I'm still planning to get a computer of some sort for my HT setup.....

Though it occurs to me that immediate solution should this problem present itself, is connect the computer to the VGA input on my TV.