Making my Lenovo MCE RC-6 IR Receiver immune to interference by my TV backlight

Sadly due the newer technologies employed in CFL bulbs (which incidentally is the technology behind my TV) emit a lot of IR interference on the frequency ranges used by the older IR controls. Vishay publishes a summary which goes into more technical detail here: http://www.vishay.com/docs/80072/disturan.pdf.

My MCE receiver is an RC-6 system by SMK RXX6000-40 branded Lenovo, if you want to buy one of your own then please checkout eBay.


HP Remote with USB Receiver RC-6 [Taken from eBay auction linked here]

However despite being aesthetically excellent the receiver suffers from interference from the TV backlight which makes it unusable if the room light isn't bright, wholly unsuitable for certain movies.

This is a pretty common problem for the older IR systems however newer IR receiver modules have been enhanced with better filtering systems.

 Opening the receiver is easy, a single screw hidden in the center of the label and the top and bottom come apart to reveal a single PCB.


The IR module is the black module standing up on the lefthand edge of the PCB (the "front" of the PCB is the south west side). Careful scrutiny of the top of the module reveals it is a Vishay Siliconix TSOP34838, a 38kHz filtered IR module.
Consulting the datasheet from Vishay, http://www.vishay.com/docs/82489/tsop322.pdf, we can see that there is another, pin compatible module, with an enhanced filtering system (Vishay's Active Gain Control 4 or AGC4) to exclude the interference the TSOP34438 is vulnerable to.

I have the new module on order and when it arrives I'll post the results.

My current home media center build: Mythmaster

Apologies - working for two long under various agreements that mean I can't discuss my work means I haven't posted anything in too long.

Hardware

Bought from eBay from Tamsolutions (there may be more available as they seem to have shipments regularly as of May 10th 2014). The computer is quite noisy so it is based down in the basement and connected to the TV by an HDMI extender and a USB extension cable.

Case: AIC RSC-4ED2 with 6x SATA-II 3.0 Gbps four position backplane (TW-000-51675-AR).

Motherboard: SuperMicro H8DME-2 nVidia MCP 55 Pro.
 - Modified one of the PCIe 8x sockets to accept a x16 GFX card by opening the end of the socket.

GFX Card: GeForce GT 240. [Chosen as it can do the most complete deinterlace on 1080i video]
 - Modified with a flywire to connect the PRSNT#1 pin (1A) to PRSNT#2 (48B) so the motherboard detects the card in the modified PCIe 8x socket.

CPU: Two Quad Core Opteron 2389s. [An eBay purchase to replace the single Dual Core 2212 HE. Don't forget the extra CPU cooler]

Memory: 24 Gigabytes of PC-5300P. [Increased by another eBay purchase]

3x SATA Controller Cards: AOC-SAT2-MV8

Drives:
2x HP ST3250824AS 250GB SATA HDDs in Linux Software RAID 1. Note please don't waste time trying to enable SATA-II or NCQ on the HP versions of this disk. They are SATA-I and don't advertise NCQ.

6x 2TB Seagate or Western Digital HDDs managed by ZFS.

TV: 47" VIZIO E470VA

HDMI Extender: No real name HDMI over dual CAT5e or CAT6 cables from Amazon.

USB Long Cable: An active USB 2.0 cable from Amazon.

ATSC Receiver: HDHR4-2US Silicondust HDHomeRun Dual Tuner.

Remote control: Lenovo RC-6 receiver by SMK RXX6000-40.

Software

OS: Linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
 - nVidia drivers from Ubuntu 319.
 - Pulseaudio removed to enable sound in XBMC standalone
 - User autologin running XBMC standalone.
 - Modified the udev rules to enable the IR remote (MCE USB by SMK) device ids, read this thread for details.

Disk Management: ZFS on Linux, GIT head (as the current 0.6.2 release is old and the new version is about to be released. To work on Kernel 3.14 the latest GIT version is necessary).

Frontend: XBMC 13.0 Gotham.

Backend: Mythtv 0.27 managing the Silicondust HD HomeRun and scheduling recordings.

UK DVB Channel Numbers for MythDora 5

Mythtv, for those who don't know, is a very powerful, flexible, PVR tweakers paradise which can be run on top of an existing linux OS or from one of the customised distributions available. The new version of Mythdora, 5, has a really irritating problem: using UK freeview DVB-T it doesn't assign channel numbers as you would expect. So to the rescue is a small mysql script to do just that. The channel numbers come from the awesome DigitalSpy website, one of the best collections of information on transmitted media I have ever come across.


Script:

USE mythconverg;
UPDATE channel SET channum=1 WHERE name='BBC ONE';       
UPDATE channel SET channum=2 WHERE name='BBC TWO';      
UPDATE channel SET channum=3 WHERE name='ITV1';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=4 WHERE name='Channel 4';    
UPDATE channel SET channum=5 WHERE name='Five';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=6 WHERE name='ITV2';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=7 WHERE name='BBC THREE';    
UPDATE channel SET channum=9 WHERE name='BBC FOUR';     
UPDATE channel SET channum=10 WHERE name='ITV3';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=11 WHERE name='SKY THREE';    
UPDATE channel SET channum=12 WHERE name='UKTV History'; 
UPDATE channel SET channum=13 WHERE name='Channel 4+1';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=14 WHERE name='More 4';       
UPDATE channel SET channum=16 WHERE name='QVC';          
UPDATE channel SET channum=18 WHERE name='The HITS';     
UPDATE channel SET channum=19 WHERE name='Dave';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=20 WHERE name='Virgin1';      
UPDATE channel SET channum=21 WHERE name='TMF';          
UPDATE channel SET channum=22 WHERE name='Ideal World';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=23 WHERE name='bid tv';       
UPDATE channel SET channum=24 WHERE name='price-drop tv';
UPDATE channel SET channum=28 WHERE name='ITV4';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=29 WHERE name='E4';           
UPDATE channel SET channum=30 WHERE name='E4+1';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=31 WHERE name='ITV2 +1';      
UPDATE channel SET channum=32 WHERE name='Film4';        
UPDATE channel SET channum=34 WHERE name='SETANTA SPORTS';
UPDATE channel SET channum=35 WHERE name='Five US';      
UPDATE channel SET channum=36 WHERE name='FIVER';        
UPDATE channel SET channum=37 WHERE name='smileTV';      
UPDATE channel SET channum=42 WHERE name='Nuts TV';      
UPDATE channel SET channum=43 WHERE name='Gems TV';      
UPDATE channel SET channum=44 WHERE name='GEMSTV1';      
UPDATE channel SET channum=45 WHERE name='Lottery Xtra'; 
UPDATE channel SET channum=61 WHERE name='TVX / REDHOT'; 
UPDATE channel SET channum=70 WHERE name='CBBC Channel';
UPDATE channel SET channum=71 WHERE name='CBeebies';     
UPDATE channel SET channum=75 WHERE name='CITV';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=80 WHERE name='BBC NEWS';
UPDATE channel SET channum=81 WHERE name='BBC Parliament';
UPDATE channel SET channum=82 WHERE name='Sky News';     
UPDATE channel SET channum=83 WHERE name='Sky Spts News';
UPDATE channel SET channum=87 WHERE name='Community';    
UPDATE channel SET channum=88 WHERE name='Teachers TV';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=100 WHERE name='Teletext';     
UPDATE channel SET channum=101 WHERE name='Ttext Holidays';
UPDATE channel SET channum=102 WHERE name='Rabbit';       
UPDATE channel SET channum=103 WHERE name='TeletextCasino';
UPDATE channel SET channum=104 WHERE name='Teletext on 4';
UPDATE channel SET channum=105 WHERE name='BBCi';
UPDATE channel SET channum=108 WHERE name='Sky Text';     
UPDATE channel SET channum=300 WHERE name='4TVinteractive';
UPDATE channel SET channum=301 WHERE name='301';          
UPDATE channel SET channum=302 WHERE name='302';          
UPDATE channel SET channum=303 WHERE name='303';          
UPDATE channel SET channum=304 WHERE name='tvtv DIGITAL'; 
UPDATE channel SET channum=305 WHERE name='305';          
UPDATE channel SET channum=700 WHERE name='BBC Radio 1';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=701 WHERE name='1Xtra BBC';    
UPDATE channel SET channum=702 WHERE name='BBC Radio 2';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=703 WHERE name='BBC Radio 3';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=704 WHERE name='BBC Radio 4';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=705 WHERE name='BBC R5 Live';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=706 WHERE name='BBC 5L SportsX';
UPDATE channel SET channum=707 WHERE name='BBC 6 Music';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=708 WHERE name='BBC 7';        
UPDATE channel SET channum=709 WHERE name='BBC Asian Net.';
UPDATE channel SET channum=710 WHERE name='BBC World Sv.';
UPDATE channel SET channum=711 WHERE name='The Hits Radio';
UPDATE channel SET channum=712 WHERE name='Smash Hits\!';  
UPDATE channel SET channum=713 WHERE name='Kiss';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=714 WHERE name='heat';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=715 WHERE name='Magic';        
UPDATE channel SET channum=716 WHERE name='Q';            
UPDATE channel SET channum=718 WHERE name='SMOOTH RADIO'; 
UPDATE channel SET channum=721 WHERE name='MOJO';         
UPDATE channel SET channum=722 WHERE name='Kerrang\!';     
UPDATE channel SET channum=723 WHERE name='talkSPORT';    
UPDATE channel SET channum=724 WHERE name='Clyde 1';      
UPDATE channel SET channum=725 WHERE name='Premier Radio';
UPDATE channel SET channum=727 WHERE name='Virgin Radio'; 
UPDATE channel SET channum=728 WHERE name='Heart';        

To use it cut and paste the SQL into a text file called channel_num_fix.sql. Then run as root:

/etc/init.d/mythbackend stop
mysql -u mythtv -p < channel_num_fix.sql
/etc/init.d/mythbackend start

2 Potential warnings here: Firstly I get you to stop the backend. I am uncertain that is necessary, however on your own head be it. Also if you have channels not listed I would ensure they are not assigned to a channel number that one of the above channel's want. I don't know what would happen, perhaps nothing bad as each channel has a unique ID as well as its number.