HDR-FoxT2 & FoxSatHDR incompatibilities

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HDR-FoxT2 & FoxSatHDR incompatibilities

(8 posts)

DougTheMac

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Hello folks - new member, first post:

We have two homes (lucky us!) with an HDR-FoxT2 in our UK home. I recently bought a FoxSatHDR for our second home in France, expecting, among other things, that the user interface would be very similar. (We are of a certain age, and remembering how to work each set of boxes can be a struggle!). To my great disappointment, the UIs are very different. Why?? But I guess this only affects a tiny minority of people, so hardly an issue for a forum, just a little winge.

More importantly, the "favourites" functions of the FoxSatHDR are extremely confusing and downright useless. As far as I can gather from the manual and this forum, they can only be used when selecting channels to watch live. The whole point of an HDR is that you watch virtually nothing live - everything gets recorded and timeshifted, allowing you to skip adverts and choose your own viewing times. It seems there is no way to see a sub-set of channels when looking at the EPG to select what to record. On the HDR-FoxT2, for those of you with a FoxSatHDR, pressing the blue button when in the EPG allows you to select only favourites. Not so on the FoxSatHDR. There is a prominent green label "All Channels" at top right, which implies that there should be an option somewhere to change this to "Favourites" but for the life of me I can't find out how to do this. Am I missing something, or is this just not possible?

I have been through the channels and deleted all the ones I NEVER watch; but I think that if I deleted those that I seldom watch, the only way to retrieve them would be a complete re-tune, re-deletion of never-watched channels, and re-program of all scheduled recordings.....

The second major disappointment in the compatibility stakes is that I had hoped that I could copy recordings from one Humax box to the other. This is a frequent requirement, as whenever we move from one home to the other, we like to take episodes of series that we haven't quite caught up with. We used to have a pair of Panasonic/Pioneer HDR-HDD boxes that allowed this, albeit clumsily using DVD-R or DVD-RW, and obviously at analogue and SD quality. The HDR-Fox-T2 will copy to USB stick, and I can play back from the stick again on the -T2 or on my Mac, but the FoxSatHDR doesn't recognise the stick. So, it seems there is some incompatibility in file formats or disk formats.

So, can any of you help with either of these two topics? I have posted this in both the FoxSatHDR and HDR-Fox-T2 forums as it seems relevant to both.

Doug

| Sun 18 Mar 2012 10:09:14 #1 |
grahamlthompson

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You can't easily play back Hi Definition recordings transferred from any Humax box due to the encyption imposed by Freeview and Freesat.

Additionally the aac audio used on Freeview-HD requires recoding to Dolby Digital for replay on most kit.

For SD recordings it's fairly simple due to fine work by Raydon.

AV2HDR will create the support files required to play back non native recordings on a Foxsat-hdr including I guess SD .ts files from a HDR FOX T2. (In addition to a .ts file two files with the same name but with .nts and .hmt extensions are required to be present).

AV2HDR-T2 will do the same for the HDR FOX T2 including SD recordings made on a Foxsat-hdr and HD ones if recorded using non freesat mode.

| Sun 18 Mar 2012 11:26:52 #2 |
DougTheMac

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Thanks Graham. A few comments:

(1) You didn't address my issue with "favourites" - am I doing something wrong, or does the FoxSat indeed not allow you to view only a favourite subset of stations on the EPG when looking for what to record?

(2) The HD issue is, I guess, to be expected - the FoxT2 manual indeed says you can't copy them; I had just hoped that it might be possible between the FoxT2 and the FoxSat, but I guess the encryption differs between FreeView and FreeSat. What I now can't remember (and can't check till I get home) is whether I even managed to copy the HD files from the FoxT2 in the first place - I think I have one HD file which tried to copy but ran out of space on a 4GB USB stick (and if it was more than 4GB, would have failed anyway as too big for FAT32).

(3) Your advice to use AVHDR isn't applicable to me (an Apple man) but for other Apple users viewing this post, SD recordings copied from FoxT2 play ok on my Mac using VLC media player (open-source freeware). I have also used HandBrake to process them into .m4v files for eg AppleTV, but this is a bit slow (about 1hr per hour on my 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 duo MBP).

(4) Handbrake is capable of outputting other formats; if I were to try to get Handbrake to create files that would play on a FoxSat or FoxT-2, what formats do I need to create?

(5) A newbie question - other forums I subscribe to automatically email me when a response to a question is made - this forum doesn't seem to - should I have set something somewhere? Can't find anywhere to do this.

Hope you (or someone) can answer these.

Doug

| Thu 22 Mar 2012 18:50:51 #3 |
grahamlthompson

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The epg can't be made to follow favourites.

There's a AV2HDR compiled for the MAC

http://myhumax.org/blog/?page_id=166

The encryption is unique to a specific box, matters not if it's a Freesat or Freeview one. You can't play an encrypted recording made on a Foxsat-hdr on another Foxsat-hdr

The help file for AV2HDR details the basic requirements

| Thu 22 Mar 2012 19:07:45 #4 |
DougTheMac

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Thanks again, Graham:

The lack of favourites in the EPG is hopefully something Humax will address in future; its omission in a box whose prime function is to record programs is just daft. The FoxT2 has it - much better.

I have downloaded AV2HDR but can't get it to run on my Mac laptop (and I have downloaded & installed Mono as instructed, and I have X11 installed). Don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'll have another go on my iMac desktop when I get home.

| Fri 23 Mar 2012 10:42:34 #5 |
grahamlthompson

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Can't really help, what I know about OS X would fit on a matchbox. Raydon contributes to this forum so hopefully eventually he will advise. From a post by Repassac he's away at the moment.

You could create a linux boot CD and try the Linux version.

| Fri 23 Mar 2012 11:01:55 #6 |
REPASSAC

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I think the current Mac link is here http://www.4shared.com/file/2Zgoc36S/AV2HDR_v1_4_for_MAC.html

Can you describe exactly what happens when you try to run it please. I am not a Mac person but I am sure radyon will appreciate as much info as possible.

Which he is away (back Monday so I understand) it is also quite possible that he still is consulting the forum.

| Fri 23 Mar 2012 15:38:29 #7 |
DougTheMac

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OK, I think I didn't do enough restarts or in the right order. Just tried again and it works - sort of. At least the app launched and ran this time (which it didn't first time round). My first re-attempt (using a source .ts file from an old iDVD-created home DVD) processed the video ok (played on FoxSat) but no sound. The only FoxT2-created source file I have wouldn't work, but it may be corrupt. Can't try anything else 'til I return home to the FoxT2 in10 days; and then I won't be able to test the output in the FoxSat for several months.... But I will try the reverse process of copying files from FOxSat to try to play on T2.
So, folks, AV2HDR for Mac probably works, if it weren't for me.
But do I need to get someone to format some USB sticks in Ext3 format for me? So far I have been using FAT32 - seems ok so far, but the forum seems to tell me that FoxSat prefers Ext3....and a must-have for any file >4GB?

| Sat 24 Mar 2012 22:12:53 #8 |