Okay, maybe not disaster.

But has anyone had this problem: you're planning to go away for vacation, and you set up all your "important" shows to record while you're gone.

And when you come back, you discover that your lovely cable or FiOs company decided to do a software upgrade or some other nonsense while you were gone. And at the end of all their fiddling, they leave your Cable or FiOs box in the OFF POSITION, when you had specifically left it ON so that the IR Blaster could change the channels for your shows to record. AND NONE of your shows were therefore recorded. All you have is a white screen throughout.

Anyone dealt with this issue? And more importantly, anyone find a workaround or some way to disable the off/on switch of the converter box?

My FiOs box is a Motorola QIP7100 if that information helps. (But I had the same problem with the cable company converter box before I switched to FiOs.)

Help! Anyone?

Okay, maybe not disaster.

But has anyone had this problem: you're planning to go away for vacation, and you set up all your "important" shows to record while you're gone.

And when you come back, you discover that your lovely cable or FiOs company decided to do a software upgrade or some other nonsense while you were gone. And at the end of all their fiddling, they leave your Cable or FiOs box in the OFF POSITION, when you had specifically left it ON so that the IR Blaster could change the channels for your shows to record. AND NONE of your shows were therefore recorded. All you have is a white screen throughout.

Anyone dealt with this issue? And more importantly, anyone find a workaround or some way to disable the off/on switch of the converter box?

My FiOs box is a Motorola QIP7100 if that information helps. (But I had the same problem with the cable company converter box before I switched to FiOs.)

Help! Anyone?

Scientific Atlanta boxes have an option to Power-On whenever it receives either a "Power" signal or a numeric signal from a remote. It's called "Power-On" keys, and out-of-the-box, the option to power on with power & numeric keys is NOT set. With the box set to power on with numeric keys, if my box shuts-off, once my RTV sends a command to change the channel, it will power on.

You could look through the menus on your Moto set-top box to see if it has a similar option.

Nope, Motorola doesn't have any user menus that allow me to do that. And a call to both Motorola tech support and Verizon tech support proved less than fruitless. (Who do they hire at these places anyway?)

Anyone else any ideas?

Didn't someone make a device years ago that addressed this very issue? It somehow sensed the cable box was turned off and turned it back on. It required you to modify a remote control (and I'm not talking about programming one, more like taking it apart and soldering on wires), but it worked.

Many cable boxes also include a "Wake Up" feature that will turn the box on automatically every day at a specified time. I used to do this with my Cablevision box. I set it for something like 3am.

- A