You may think you only need an extender when you have a complicated home theater setup, or if you are running out of keymove macro space.  I hope from this example you can see how even a simple setup can benefit from an extender. 

Figure 1 shows my guest room/den setup before my cable company announced they were going all digital.  I basically needed a remote that was either the DVD/VCR or the digital TV.  My TV was receiving my complete cable package and even a few digital channels. 

Then my cable company changed to require a set top box for basic cable.  I was issued a simple DTA box for my basic cable system.  This box itself had RF in and out connections but there were no buttons on the unit itself. 

The remote was a universal remote that controlled the TV’s volume and power functions.  The rest of the buttons controlled the DTA functions.

A simple volume punch through and keymove to a power button could simulate this remote no problem.  However it starts to get confusing if you are using a remote that doesn’t have native channel punch through.

The DTA box tunes in channels converts the selected channel to an analog RF signal that it sends out on channel 3 or 4. 

My first question was, do I NEED to convert everything to analog, since I have a digital TV.  The answer was I could get some local channels without the box, but I needed a DTA to get my basic cable channels, or a HD Set Top box at an extra $ charge if I wanted HD service for my digital TV. 

I plugged my equipment in as shown in figure 2.  I executed the TV’s scan, and my TV only found channel 3, none of the digital channels made it through the DTA box.  So all those brilliant HD channels that made the TV so appealing were gone now that the cable company had going all digital. 

When I tried to use my TV’s remote to do some of the features I use, like changing the picture quality, turning on closed captions, or changing the sound to surround sound, the DTA kept changing channels.   I called my cable provider, trying to get this issue resolved by changing to a different DTA box, or perhaps a firmware download, but none of the people that I talked to had any solution for me.  Fortunately the upgrade that I made with the JP1 tools sent the Sharp TV signals at a slightly different frequency, and that cleared up the interference issues I was having with the DTA without my having to make adjustments to the protocol myself.   Now I could use some of the advanced features on my TV without having the DTA constantly changing channels, but I was still unhappy because I didn’t have any HD for my HD TV.  I removed the DTA box did a channel scan to see if there were still HD channels available now that the digital conversion was complete.  The local HD channels were available but most of the “cable only” channels were missing from the lineup juar as the cable rep told me they would be. 

So I decided to see if I could get my local HD channels and my cable by using a splitter.

With the setup in figure 3, the DVD/VCR setup needs to be turned on to watch the TV, because the cable is getting passed through AV inputs.  The TV is set to tune in just the HD channels, the rest of the channels have been skipped or removed from the TV’s list for use with channel up and down.

I’ve also done my due diligence.   The TV has discrete on/off and all the input discretes except the TV tuner.  The TV ch+ or ch- key will force the TV Tuner even though there is no discrete. The DVD/VCR has no discretes, although opening and closing the DVD will force the unit to turn on.  I decided it is not acceptable to me to use the open/close as a discrete on hack, as this seems like undo wear and tear on the unit.  So it is going to be a toggling setup.

Now that I’ve got the wiring done, and the stations edited, the reality of how complex this is to operate with a remote becomes apparent, even though I’ve done the wiring myself, half the time I can’t figure out what mode the remote is in.  Since this remote is in the guest room/den/office it needs to be simple to use. 

I’ve chosen a Comcast 3 device remote for this application.

Ideally this remote would use its ‘ALL ON’ button to turn on the equipment and prepare for watching cable. 

To view cable from the DTA box, the DVD/VCR needs to be on and  tuned in to channel 03; the TV source needs to be AV inputs; and the channel buttons are set to the DTA while the menu and volume buttons are pointing to the TV.

This of course is easy with an extender installed and enabled.