Your first problem will
skirge01Your first problem will probably be your main obstacle, which I also cannot figure out how to overcome on DirecTV. You can’t automate the menu navigation on the STB. While you could certainly get it to tune the channel and begin recording, that’s where control would stop. You’d need to use the STB remote to make any selections necessary to get the VOD stream to start. I haven’t found an acceptable method to integrate that into my TV watching, but I’ll explain the roadblocks I found.
To make matters even worse, let’s say you did actually take note of all the menu navigation necessary in order to watch a show on VOD and input all those sequences into something like EventGhost or Girder, all to be sent via a single button on a Logitech Harmony remote. You’re still guessing what messages your commands are responding to. If the channel is tuned improperly, all other commands are wasted. What happens if the STB’s software is updated and the sequence changes? What if there’s an additional prompt for some reason? What if it manages to tune a PPV channel and the sequence of commands you send actually wind up making a PPV purchase?