I have a live videocast called SpaceVidcast which aims to educate the planet on why manned flights to other planets are necessary for the survival of the human race. There's a weekly show element (9pm CDT every Thursday and I expect to see you there) as well as a live 24x7 stream of NASA TV and the ESA (or whatever space news I can legally get my hands on).

I had been pulling the Windows Media stream from NASA but like all things Windows Media based the stream was not that stable, didn't look that great and was in general a pain in the butt to work with. The stream would die at least once a day. I needed a stable solution.

I found a local satellite expert who knew how to do high-quality Free-To-Air (FTA) reception, PSB Satellite. FTA satellite is a legal method of scanning a bunch of satellites for open and unencrypted channels to see what is available. We set up two dishes, one is a fixed dish with NASA TV on Ku band and the other is a motorized dish to grab all other Ku band signals (C band requires at least a 6' dish which I don't want to deal with). After 7 hours we get everything installed, configured and working correctly. I have HD video of the event which I'll be posting to TE some time soon as well as the unedited live version on my personal blog.

Now I have two dishes, one SpaceVidcast stream and no easy way to control any of it. How am I going to keep the SpaceVidcasters happy with the latest and greatest space news? I can't always be at home controlling the dish, so what can I do to remotely control the video stream and switch between them?

The answer is Slingbox Solo.

Actually, the real answer is the new Slingbox Pro HD that has the h.264 CODEC as I'm not a fan of VC1/WM9, but that's not available yet. So for now I use the Slingbox Solo, but there's a problem. I can get audio and video to stream but the Slingbox needs to be able to control the satellite receiver we're using, the Traxis DBS-3500 and there are no IR commands for the Traxis in the Slingbox IR command library. I searched the Sling forum, Google and countless other forums with no luck. I found others asking for remote codes for Traxis boxes dating back to 2006, so I knew this wasn't going to be easy. Now I have solution that I can see anywhere in the world, but not control. Drats!

With a little (actually a lot) of help from the VisionPlus.us FTA satellite forum I was able to generate an IR mapping command for the Slingbox that works with the Traxis DBS-3500 and get a remote control running for the Slingbox (that post is here if you need to do it yourself). Now I have the ability to scan thousands of available channels live from space and look for space related content for SpaceVicast.com. No need to be home, I can scan from my office, from my phone (and hopefully soon my iPhone), from my laptop or even my local Apple store. So long as I have Internet access I have the ability to control the content on SpaceVidcast.com by simply logging in to my Slingbox and looking for new channels.

The only problem remaining is the switching between the NASA TV feed and all other feeds. I'll be searching for an IR controllable S-Video/Audio switcher so I can just hit a button on the Slingbox remote and change to the other feed. Or maybe I'll grab a second DV bridge and bring that in to the computer (but then I have an audio issue). No matter, I'll get that worked out and then I'll have the coolest, most awesomest, remotely controlled Internet television studio ever!

Hey, I told you I was going to geek out!