Tivo IR control with Motorola DTC-6412/2500 set top

[mike10sims]

Is there an alternative to the IR control cable. My box does not have a serial cable and i must use the control cable supplied by TIVO to communicate with the front of the cable box. The channel changing is terribly slow. It got better once i upgraded to 7.2 software. Is this something that is common to most TIVO to cable box channel changings? The box is a Dual DVR Motorola DCT 6412/2500 and has no serial ports, but does have an IR female plug in the back.

[Moonreaper]

Hello Mike. You would only be able to use either the serial cable or the ir cable for the channel changing. If your cable or sat. box is not set up for the serial cable you would need to use the ir cables. The small headphone jack looking end will be plugged into your Tivo unit and the other L shaped ends will stick out from the front of your cable or sat. box in front of the ir sensor. The ir input on the back of your cable or sat. box would not be used in this case. Sorry but these are the only 2 options available at the moment for channel changing. Using the ir cables causes the changing to be a little slower than with serial cables (around 3-5 seconds per channel change). The only other way that would be faster would be if you had cable directly plugged into the RF input on the Tivo. You would only be getting your basic cable channels but the channel changing would be much faster because the Tivo would be using it's internal tuner to change the channels. I hope this helps.