Yesterday I just got directv in my house. I have a couple of d11 receivers
with usb ports in the back. The usb port is the regular rectangular type
like the ones in the back of a computer. Is it possible to have a cable
that has two rectangular ends and use that to control the receiver? I saw
one guy say he got it working with a usb->serial converter, but I wanted to
see if that was my only choice or not.
It is possible to have a cable that has USB on both ends....but that cable will be made up of a USB->Serial, a Null-Modem adapter, and a Serial->USB again, all connected together with electrical tape :-P
The issue is that the USB port on the computer and the one on the STB are both host usb - and just like with two PCs, you can't just plug a USB male->male cable in and connect them. With serial you could do that, because serial is a "dumb" technology - it knows nothing about how it is to be used, and expects the computer to know it's there and connect to it. USB, on the other hand, requires that devices have circuitry in them so that they are detected by the host computer as a particular type of device so that the host knows what driver to use and how to access it. Since both ends are USB, they both need to be able to find that kind of circuitry, so there needs to be two USB->serial adapters.
If the cable company decided to redesign the STB, it would make sense for them to make it so that the USB->serial conversion is done inside the box, so that you can just plug in a USB extension cable to use it. Problem there is that you wouldn't be able to use it with a standard serial port anymore, so a lot of their test equipment wouldn't be usable.
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