Changing Sky+ channel from PC?

yorkshireJake

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Good morning folks,

Hopefully one of you techies will be able to answer this question easily. I have scoured the net for an out of the box solution and found little.

Basicall, I have a sky+ setup in my study, connected to my PC (scart --> ATI Radeon 7200). Recording in vcd, quality is great, mainly used for recording uk horse racing.

Now getting to the point! There are now two horse racing channels, and I would like to be able to change the channel on the sky+ box from the pc using an ir transmitter.

Can anyone help with suggestions of an out of the box solution where I can install software on my windows xp pc, and attach the ir receiver/ transmitter (as I understand they have to be taught?), and then schedule the software to change the channel for me to allow unattended recordings of my beloved horse racing?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Regards
Jake
 

PoloMint

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You could make a IR receiver/transmitter, record all the Sky+ control signals into the PC then reproduce them when needed. Kits are available that have the IR bulbs and circuitry, you would need some basic soldering skills to put them together.

I looked into this last year (for freeview, not Sky+, but same idea) and the main problem was that the IR software was very fiddly and picky, and none of the ones I could see had any facility for scheduling an IR transmission (to change the channel when I wasn’t there) so I gave up on the idea. If you have Sky I would just use autoview in the personal planner, less fun, but probably more reliable.

However as I said that was a while ago, there may be better software available now.
 

PaulR

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If you have a laptop with an IR transmitter then you might be able to use this to change channels.

When I am holiday and using my laptop sometimes the TV will change channel seemingly of ts own accord! I then did some digging on the web and found that there are programs that will exploit this to operate TVs and DVD players. They might also do the same for the $ly and $ly+ boxes.

Unfortunately this was about 12 months ago and I've lost all the info since then.

PaulR
 

skyoutUK

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You could use universal remote with timer to switch channels independently of sky EPG and with added benefit of controlling all of your equipment with single remote. One For All and Philips have few models with timer function and they are available for as little as £50.
 
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