I have, thru Comcast, a Motorola DCT6416 III HD-DVR box. What I am looking for, which may not even exist, is codes for POWER ON and POWER OFF, not just the POWER which toggles it on/off. The remote only has a power button but sometimes the actual unit has more capabilities than the remote. My Sony TV had a remote with just a POWER button but I found codes here for POWER ON and POWER OFF, so I'm hoping to be able to do the same thing with the cable box. I would need the text version of the Pronto codes if anyone happens to have this.

There are none.

There's two things you can do.

1.) Leave it on all the time. This is really the best option, as it draws the same amount of power whether or not it's on or off.

2.) Use a workaround for discrete power. Pressing MENU-POWER will always turn the unit off. Pressing MENU-POWER-POWER will always turn the unit on. Thus you could set up a macro to simulate discrete on and off.

I'm wondering if programmed recordings might be a problem with the workaround.

Let's say you have a remote that keeps track of the power state of the DVR, either with flags, or just by having the two halves of the workaround in macros such that the state is controlled.
Let's say you turn the unit off with that workaround.
Then a programmed recording is done. I assume the DVR stays on after that.

If the unit is then on and gets the ON workaround MENU-POWER-POWER, will it turn off or will it stay on?

I see that I'm questioning how the unit responds to the workaround macros. So if the unit is off, won't MENU-POWER turn it on? I'd expect the off unit to ignore MENU, then turn on with POWER.

If the unit is on, it seems that the first two steps of MENU-POWER-POWER would turn it off...but then would the second POWER command turn it back on again? Is some minimum delay needed between the two power commands?

Nope. Here's how it works:

When the box is off, pressing MENU brings up the service menu that allows you to select resolutions and stuff. Pressing POWER returns it to the off state, and pressing POWER again turns it on.

When it's on, pressing MENU brings up the regular menu. Pressing POWER turns it off, and POWER again turns it on.

Yes, there's some delay needed.

Thanks for the help. I was able to get the macros to work but I decided to remove them and just leave it on. I was thinking it would save heat and power but it doesn't do that anyhow. The other (irritating) thing is that when you power it on, it puts it on channel 1 ("Welcome to Comcast"), not the station is was last on.

IIRC, this can only be done by pressing the buttons on the unit itself, not by sending IR codes.


I somehow vaguely remember that to be a menu setting in that setup menu.

Actually you can get into and navigate the service menu via IR. I just tried it on my DCT6416III. :)

On this same unit, is there any discrete code that would activate closed captioning on the fly without have to go thru that setup menu?