HDTV and Tivo

I've been fiddling with off-air HDTV over the past few months, and recently picked up a HDTV DirecTV tuner for the family room. It downconverts to 480i to allow display of HD content on the "big enough" analog TV we already have. The idea was to allow the kids and wife to watch some of the 'alternate channel' programming one sees on the local digital stations.

For example, our local PBS has 5 digital stations, all showing different content most of which is never broadcast on the analog station. And some of that content is pretty good and worthwhile - more so than much of the stuff available analog anywhere.

The problem I didn't anticipate in this setup, though, is how to make all this work with Tivo, which is something of a fixture in the family's television viewing.

Digital stations aren't single numbers (eg 9 or 36), but are number pairs {9-1, 9-2, 2-1}, where the first number is the 'analog' station number, and the second is the digital subchannel. The remote control for the tuner allows entering a hyphen ('-'), or you can just use the channel up/down buttons.

Tivo, though, doesn't use channel up/down, and there doesn't appear (yet) to be an easy way to hack its channel list and the IR codes it send for them to allow Tivo to send a number pair with hyphen. Nor does this hdtv tuner allow remapping the digital channels to 'normal' channel numbers that other equipment is capable of.

So I'm wondering how to proceed. One idea may be to hack the Tivo box (again), this time to extend the channel table and IR codes. I'd be pleased to hear from others who may have another solution that doesn't involve buying an HD/DirecTV Tivo. First, that box is danged expensive. But second, if I switch I'll lose my lifetime Tivo subscription ...

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