From: yermej <yermej@...>
Date: 2008-02-16T05:54:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Programmatic VCR Control

On Feb 15, 1:17 pm, Andrew Stewart <b...@airbladesoftware.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was flicking through the Ruby Quizzes when I saw the VCR Program
> Manager (#101) -- and thought how nice it would be to control my
> (real) video recorder via Ruby rather than its native GUI.
>
> http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz101.html
>
> Inevitably when I return from a holiday somewhere I find that I'm
> missing the final fifteen minutes of a favourite programme because
> the TV network changed the schedules after I left.  Of course you
> only find out you missed the last part once you've watched up to that
> point.  Grr!
>
> With a Ruby interface I could set a daily cron job to check the TV
> schedules over the web and update the VCR if necessary.
>
> So does anybody know of a neat way of interfacing to a VCR?  Ideally
> a cheap piece of electronics I could buy online...and no, a TiVo
> thingy doesn't count as cheap :)
>
> Thanks!
>
> Andy Stewart
>
> -------http://airbladesoftware.com

If the VCR can be programmed solely via remote, you could use a
software driven IR emitter to send the right signals to the VCR.
Something like this: http://www.usbuirt.com/ If you really want to do
this on the cheap and your time isn't worth anything (if it is, you
should probably just get a TiVo), you could buy a much more bare bones
IR emitter (and probably a receiver so your software can learn the
right codes) and do all the code yourself.