The following is probably impossible to achieve but if it can be done someone in this forum should know how to do it.

I am in UK and have the UK version of Tivo (I think it corresponds to the old v1 Thompson Tivo in US) and a Sky satellite box.

My wife does A LOT of channel surfing (going from one channel to the next sequentially). Because she uses the Tivo's functions a lot (pause / rewind / tape) she does the channel changing with the Tivo remote. This is very very slow (it waits a bit at the end of the 3 number sequence, then sends its to sky, then sky changes it) and also Tivo does not know about missing channels in the sequence (i.e. Even if channel 368 does not exist Tivo will still send the number and you just get an error from the sky box).

If you do the surfing with the sky remote, its fast and it misses out channels that don’t exist yet. Unfortunately in order to record with tivo (with the correct title and duration) you'll then need to sent the channel number from the tivo remote.

To further complicate things, the TV is tuned for Tivo on channel 7 and Sky on channel 9. Obviously both channels show Sky but when on 7 you can see the tivo functions. For some reason when on channel 7 and using the Sky remote to surf, channel changes are slower than doing the same when in channel 9. I think they appear slower because they are sky pictures processed by tivo.

So ideally I want pronto to do the following:

Surf the channels as fast as with sky remote and at the end of the surf press a button and the correct tivo channel change code is sent.

What I think of doing is:

1. Press a button to enter surfing mode (Pronto changes TV to channel 9)
2. Surf (Pronto sends Sky ch+ ch- codes)
3. Press a button to end surf (pronto sends the correct tivo channel and changes TV to 7)

Of course how will pronto know which channel we are in order to sent the correct tivo code is beyond me :)

So any other suggestions failing that does anyone want a TSU3000/01 never used (not even firmware updated to the last)

get sky+ ;)

(if there are any sky+ vs tivo freaks please don't bite!)

So if I understand correctly say you:

surf on sky channel 9
switch to channel 7

Picture will be correct but tivo EPG will show details from the channel selected on TIVO?

You have two options I can tell neither of them ideal or maybe possible:

Try to add a screen per channel on the pronto. Jump between screens when channels changed. In practice this is going to be very difficult if not impossible to achieve. There are so many ways to change channel (via entering numbers, ch+/- browsing EPG then pressing select, auto channel changes due to autoview, etc).

Manual sync when ending "surf" mode. You could display a screen requesting the user i.e. the wife to enter the channel currently on when ending surf mode. You could press the select button as part of the macro so that the information you need is on the screen. This is achievable but does not do what you asked for!

"State" information is required which is handled only as a hack in the proto (via different pages). You could write a new version of firmware for the remote that handles state information ;)

Sorry for lack of actual help here.

Another option that probably wont work is removing the IR blaster from the tivo. I am not familiar with tivo and am guessing that this would cause more problems that is solves. But if there was no IR blaster the pronto would be resonsible for sending the IR to both the tivo and the sky boses. It sounds like this woud not work either as the tivo box is dumb in that a ch+ command just increases the channel by one even if the next channel does not exist.

The channel changes are with the sky (or tivo) ch+ ch- so I was going to use the same in Pronto.

I just can't think of a way that pronto will know which channel the surf finishes. Even if there was a proper programming enviroment a simple counter of ch change presses would not work as starting ch is not known (that can be fixed by a compomise - always starting on first ch 101) and the missing channels change very often.

Steve's suggestion of Sky+ is too expensive and does not solve the problem really -:) on offence m8
and his solution of the asking the user is of course the answer but in this day an age of automation cant we do someting better ???

Come on pronto hackers :)

This may not be a huge help, but I know on my old TiVo, you can go in and manually remove channels you don't get/want. This should at least put you closer to a coherent surfing ability by putting the channel changing by +/- in line with each other...

Yes, you definitely can select the channels that you watch out of the ones available. I have Telewest cable and I hate shopping channels, so I just don't have them selected. If I channel surf, I never get to see the shopping channels.

TiVo is not really designed for channel surfing and it is very slow with Telewest. I almost never surf channels because I have too much waiting to be watched in my 'now playing' list.

Perhaps surfing through the on screen EPG might be a better option. This lists only the channels you have selected and you can easily read what is currently on each channel and whats on later. When you find a channel with something interesting, you just have to press select on the remote.

Teresa

Teresa - that was funny :)

Coz my wife surfs usually the shoping channels (poor me - literaly).

The tivo EPG's fonts are too small and that you can't (I think) have it without the undelaying live TV makes it difficult to read.

Important point here, maybe: the US TiVo boxes do not send out CH+ and CH- commands. Instead, they keep track of which channel the TiVo has last asked for, and sends the three-number code of the next channel in the list when you hit CH+ of CH-. This is great because it allows the TiVo to stay in synch if you use the satellite remote separately as proposed here.

Add a satellite INFO command and a two-second delay before you switch away from the Sky to the TiVo. (It would work better to add this satellite command AFTER you switch to TiVo, but if TiVo puts up a display at that point, the satellite display will be obscured.)

This will allow you to see what satellite channel you were on so that you can then enter the same channel number with TiVo commands. This is totally NOT automated, but it might work for you; it will at least present the information for your eyes that probably cannot be programmed into the Pronto.

Thanks. I added a 'blue' button press as it anly shows the channel and not the whole info. I am still playing with the delays. I added some beeps at the transition to attract attention.

I still wish thee was another wayeven if it involved hacking either the tivo or the pronto.