Astound → Starpower and serial port support in MD

Has anyone been successful in getting Starpower to enable the serial port on their DCT2000/DCT2224/etc.? If so, how? The reps I've spoken with thus far said they don't support it, although the service center was accommodating when I went in to swap out boxes without serial ports for boxes that had them.

Both of my boxes have firmware 7.65, so the serial ports can be enabled. It's just a question of how...

Don't you mean firewire or spdif DD5.1? What use would the serial port serve on the cable boxes?

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Don't you mean firewire or spdif DD5.1? What use would the serial port serve on the cable boxes?

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The serial port allows you to change the channel externally. I have a Linux box running MythTV with 2 MPEG encoder cards (Hauppauge PVR-350's) that needs to be able to select channels on its own, and using something like an IR Blaster is too unreliable.

I'm happy to report that following a bit of work with customer service, the DB9 serial ports on both of my Motorola DCT-2224 boxes are working, as should be all serial ports for all of Starpower's boxes. For unknown reasons, the boxes they gave me just needed to be sent the proper app_enable signal from the head-end.

This is good news for any DVR/TiVo user out there thinking of using Starpower.