MCE 2005 forgot to switch set top box channel

[sted]

ok, i built my media center 2005 machine over the weekend and everything went fairly smoothly. was very impressed with the media center set up - particularly the way it worked out how to control my set top box by learning from my remote. also very impressed by the EPG and the picture quality.

so, my girlfriend loved it, i bragged about it to everyone, and i have even ordered another tv card and NTL are coming round to put another set top box in on Friday.

then, last night, it forgot to change the channel on the set top box. twice. i was gutted. has anyone else had this happen? fyi, i have it set up so that it's on standby most of the time and then fires up when it needs to record.

[richjthorpe]

Is there an RS232 port on the back of the NTL box ? Maybe you can link the PC to the NTL box and command it to change to the channel you want to record.

Richie.

[sted]

the thing is that sending the ir signal through the ir blaster seems to work perfectly - i think it's more a software thing where media center forgot to send the signal to the box.

[Werner]

if the scheduled recording was taking place on the same channel that the mce machine was on before you went into standby, then it wont issue a channel change.

E.g. watch eurosport on 43, put mce machine into standby. As far as mce machine is concerned, ntl box is still on 43 when it wakes up, and IF there is a recording due on 43 then it wont issue a channel change.

This becomes a problem if you use the ntl remote to change channels on the ntl box...mce has no idea what channel the ntl box is actually on at any time, except for assuming that if it blasted 0, 4, 3 a while ago then it should still be on 43. If you then, in the interim, use the ntl remote to change channels, well....mce has no idea you did that.

Make sense?

[sted]

Hi Werner
Makes perfect sense - and in fact that may well be the reason that happened when i was testing it later. However, when it failed (when i was out), it correctly changed the channel to Channel 4 to record but then failed to switch to BBC1 later.
I'm hoping it was an anomaly - i'll see. However, another question - i'm still trying to get fully to grips with the whole stand by thing. What i have done is set it to standby to S3 so that all the fans switch off when i press stand by on the remote. It then boots back up when i hit stand-by again, or boots up when it needs to record. What i can't get my head round is how to get it to go to standby again when it's finished recording. I went to power management in the control panel and set it to standby after 20 mins. However, this doesn't seem to work and i guess this makes sense as if it's still showing a tv show (even if no one's watching it) then why would it switch off.
So really, (sorry, i'm getting there) what i'm asking is does anyone know if there's a way to mimic a vcr timer - switch on to record, stand-by after,
Cheers
Ed