IR Blaster control of Dish Network vip222K SD (TV2) output?

[Larry J on h. D. LT <la...@fo...>]

My IR Blaster controls the HD TV1 (component) output of the Dish box just fine, no problems.  I feed this into my HD-PVR running under Mythbuntu.  But I would like to record the SD (Standard Definition) output of the dish box.

I have a spare SD encoder so I thought I would feed this SD output to the spare encoder when recording Dish content that doesn't need to be HD (news programs, old movies etc).   This would be easy if the SD (NTSC 4:3) output of the Dish box (VIP222K) was control-able via IR.  Dishnetwork support said the only way to control the SD output was with the UHF remote.

  When I disable the UHF output on the UHF (TV2) remote,  the dish box ignores all remote buttons.   (Inside the UHF remote battery compartment is a slide switch to control this).  Slide the switch to UHF/IR  and all is fine,  I can again control the channels with the dishnetwork provided remote.  So I conclude that dishnetwork support is correct.  No IR control of the SD TV2 output is possible.   It only responds to  dish remote UHF signals.

1.  Does anyone know a way to force the VIP222K to accept IR remote signals that control the SD  TV2 output.

2.  One possible way would be to employ a IR to UHF converter that would take the output of my blaster and translate that into dish network acceptable UHF signals.   But this is complicated and requires more equipment.

Ideas?  Thank you.

Larry