Unusual remote control settings

[fallscrape]

Well, I'm a bit confused, and a little intrigued at what an energy saving lightbulb can do to a NTL pace box.

For some odd reason, I'd been experiencing problems with the box switching itself off, changing channels & opening interactive screens. It came to a pinnacle one sunday evening when my box greeted me with "hello x" (where x is my firstname & surname)

How bizarre! So anyway, I decided to give tech support a ring and was told about the problems that energy saving bulbs have on the box. I'd not even considered it as a possiblity.

Anyway, recently similar problems started to occur. I presume this is due to a degenerating bulb. More interestingly is the "engineering" codes that must be built into a piece of hardware like this. With the right codes, more information must be available than is currently on the remote. The big question is, how does one go about finding them? Obviously a lightbulb is not a particularly good idea, and I presume that a 6 in 1 "one for all" remote will do the job. A computer would be best at some kind of automated code checking as this.

Anyone fancy hacking the remote codes? If these already exist, I'd like to find out what they are so I can have a looky.

[Tristan]

I presume you're in an ex-CWC (or Bromley) area. These use an odd remote protocol, very much like IrDA, which is more suseptible (sp?) to interference from energy saving bulbs than regular IR. For this reason, however, the vast majority of One4All and similar remotes simply don't work. There are ways round this, but that's another thread...

As to extra commands that the box must pick up, you're right that there are far more than just those on the remote. You can get a full keyboard which must have at least 70 keys. Then there's the fact that 4000 and 4010 boxes have two receivers, and can accept commands from two different types of remotes (the odd ones I mentioned earlier, and regular IR ones), although this is disabled in the 4010 software.

As to trying out all possible combinations, it would be possible but difficult. As I said before, the remote control protocol used is very similar to IrDA, but not exactly the same. It's actally a proprietary system designed (and probably parented by) TwoWay TV, for CWC, later adopted by Telewest too. Now, given TWTV's current finantial state, you could probably pick up the rights to the patents for a fiver and half a pack of wine gums, but anyway... a standard PC IrDA receiver is not going to be able to communicate with the box. It might be possible to write a driver to do it, but it wouldn't be an easy task by any means...

One for people cleverer than me, I think!

[Tricky]

Seen this with Laptops in buildings - We purchased 100 laptops rolled them out then had to go round them all and disable the infrared port!

[Mike Harrison]

Which box is it ?
I'd be surprised if a lamp would cause false keypresses on a IRDA-Only box (1000,2000), as there is fairly extensive error checking in the IRDA-style protocol (At least 16 check bits from memory), however if it's a 4000 box, its dual IRDA/RC5 capability wil make it more sensitive to mis-reading garbage as valid key codes.
It could also be that it is just seeing so much 'data' from the lamp that there's a buffer overflow or something happening - I know this can happen if the gaps between the IRDA keycode packets is too short.

[Shaun]

Have you tried changing the brand of lamp in the fitting near to the box, 'cos they don;t all give out the same frequency's of light.

Again I'd be surprised if it was actually the lamp causing this, but at least a little trial and error should sort it for you ;)

[tony1234]

Hello all. can anyone tell me if there is a code for an ntl pace box that is using a universal remote rm-v301. I might be a bit of a fool but I cant find out how to get the thing to work. Also the same for hyundi dvd player thanks in advance tony

[EssDee]

I think you'll find the title of this thread uses the term 'Unusual' and not 'Universal'!

:D

[tony1234]

yaeah Thank u 4 your help EssDee. I aleays appreciate it when someone I dont know tries to make a fool out of me just be4cause I am a new user and not used to the technical jargon that u use only wanted a bit of info. <removed>

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