🚀 go-pugleaf

In sci.crypt, strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
>By the way, I should have realized that one doesn't need published codes
>to do the job--just a VCR Plus device and the time to punch in codes.
>I'm not clear on one thing, though. The device doesn't tell you the
>duration of the program, except to the nearest hour. How does one
>determine that part of the coding system without using published
>codes?

The easiest way is to use published codes to get the duration.  But that
gets hard when they start using codes with 5 minute start times.  If
a movie ends at 20 minutes after the hour, does the code end there or
did they pick a code that just ends at 25 after?

BTW, I'm not sure what the finest granularity of the duration is, but I
assume it's 5 minutes.  The start times seem to have a maximum granularity
of 5 minutes.

But there is a trick you can use with the device.  It shows you the
_total_ duration of all the shows your have progammed using a bar
graph.  This is to let you know how much tape you need.  Each bar is 1
hour.  If you punch in a number, and it shows 2 bars, then you know the
duration is greater than one hour and less than or equal to two hours,
but you don't know where it falls between there.

But you can then punch in more codes, with known durations, and see
what happens.  If you add a code with a 30 minute duration, and the
number of bars stays at 2, then you know the first number had a
duration that is less than or equal to 90 minutes.

Doing this allows you to figure out all the codes, but it's very time
consuming.

Another way to find the duration is to program your VCR Plus+ with
a code, and then video tape the VCR Plus+ as it sends out the
IR signals.  You can't see the IR signals, but camcorders can.  If
your camcorder has an Hour/Minute/Second tape counter, then it's easy
to calculate when the VCR Plus+ tried to stop and start your VCR.  It
adds some extra time to the beginning and end of each show, so you have
to adjust for that, but that's easy to do by experimenting with
known codes.

>Finally,   I wonder of Curt or any of his colleagues have compiled the
>c code for the Mac?

Nope, I'm not a Mac person.  A good friend of mine (actually the guy that
got me started looking at the codes in the first place) is a full time
Mac programmer.  Maybe I can talk him into putting togither a nice
little Mac version of the program.

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