Xfinity X1 control

I have been using TiVo with SimpleControl for years (since the early Roomie Remote days) and it worked great. I just switched to Xfinity X1 and have found I cannot get SimpleControl to work with it. I researched this forum and only found a couple mentions of X1, but nothing definitive. It does not appear that the Ethernet port on the X1 box is active because my DHCP server doesn't have an active lease for the X1 box and the X1 settings menu does not give any option to manually assign an IP address.

Is it possible to learn the infrared remote commands since I have an IR blaster for my other legacy IR-only devices?

Infrared is definitely the way to go there. It's of course in the IR library already (under Xfinity).

While Comcast did announce forthcoming IP control for the X1 in September 2015, it is.... still.... "forthcoming". We are keeping close tabs on it in the event it were to be released.

I strongly recommend TiVo for Comcast environments.

I understand that TiVo is recommended for X1 users at this time for easy integration.

Would the SimpleControl blaster allow control of the X1 platform in the event that I did not want to go the TiVo route?

Thank you,

Yes, all X1 boxes are also well-controlled via Infrared.

I also have X1 and under the impression IR control is the only available method. However, I read in the v5 update, iTech activities will be disabled in the future or can no longer be customized after being grandfathered in the latest version. I hope this is a misunderstanding because I have two X1 boxes and two TVs that require IR control, not IP. If iTech support is being discontinued with v5, is there a different IR hub that will work with v5? Again, I hope this is not the case.

iTachs are the original blasters from ~2012 and prior. They used a wide variety of firmware and older hardware resulting in various support rat-holes. The GC-100 models were completely unsupportable and those have not been something we have supported officially for many years.

Over the years we have introduced 2 hardware generations and major firmware improvements over those original products. The current generation is called Simple Blaster available at shop.simplecontrol.com and Amazon. New users should only be provisioning Simple Blasters. That has no impact on existing configs or existing users.

If you have an older iTach device configured right now, you do whatever you want with that, we're not holding a hard line here and forcing everyone to migrate, it still works. We are drawing a line in the sand that while trivial to workaround right now at least establishes that everyone should be moving off those ancient units toward supportable modern blasters in the long term. New configs shouldn't use outdated iTach devices and instead use either a Roomie Blaster or Simple Blaster that have consistent firmware with the fixes needed, can be upgraded by our software, etc.