I've broken it with FTPing some mp4's

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I've broken it with FTPing some mp4's

(19 posts)

MikeGibbs

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I have a Humax HDR-FOX T2 500GB FreeView thingy. When I boot up it states that it's running Ver a7.31

I recently copied some .mp4 video clips from my PC using the ftp server (silly me!). Since then the machine frequently freezes; typically when I press the power off on the remote it won't respond to that or to any other remote functions or to the power button on the front of the box (it still shows a telly program though). If I switch off and then on again with the switch on the back of the box the machine sometimes starts to respond to the remote again and sometimes I need to switch off twice to regain control.

Does anyone know if I can restore sanity to it by just deleting the .mp4's or have I done irreparable harm by FTPing to it?

Mike.
P.S. It was always such a well behaved machine; I wish I hadn't messed about with it!!

| Sun 17 Nov 2013 23:59:29 #1 |
grahamlthompson

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Make a note of your recording schedule and try a reset to factory defaults.

If that fails I would suggest installing the custom firmware and running a disk check.

Welcome to the forum.

| Mon 18 Nov 2013 10:31:10 #2 |
athomson

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It maybe a space issue, have you tried simply removing the MP4 files?

Andy

| Mon 18 Nov 2013 13:42:47 #3 |
MikeGibbs

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Thanks for the welcome and the suggestions.

Last night, as usual, everything worked fine until I tried to power off with the remote - then it froze. So, I switched off/on with the switch on the back and deleted all the mp4's as Andy suggested. I'll report back tomorrow after this evening's viewing.

I'm not very confident that it'll work because the HDD has been fuller in the past with no problems. If it doesn't then I'll try Graham's factory reset suggestion which is second choice because it's more work (writing down all the recording schedules; whew).

Mike.

| Tue 19 Nov 2013 10:24:43 #4 |
aldaweb

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If you have a smartphone or digital camera you can take photos of the schedule and delete after setting back up. Quicker than writing everything down.

| Tue 19 Nov 2013 18:20:00 #5 |
MikeGibbs

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Thanks for that good idea AldaWeb; when analog went & I had to retune a zillion times it would have saved me a lot of trouble.

As I mentioned, I deleted all the mp4's as Andy suggested and the problem went away!

I'm wondering, though, if the problem was caused by a bad file in amongst the mp4's because as I said the HDD has, in the past, been only 45 GB free whereas with the mp4's there was 88 GB free; so it seems unlikely that it was a space problem.

Does anyone know what the software does when it goes to standby?

| Wed 20 Nov 2013 18:07:55 #6 |
athomson

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I wonder if there is a bad sector on your disk, now Mikes T2 is working checking out the custom firmware may be a good idea if only for the disk check feature it brings. Maybe the humax does not like excessively long file names or non-alphanumeric characters. Did your files fall under these categories? Does anyone here know if the humax has restrictions on file names?

Andy

| Thu 21 Nov 2013 10:51:33 #7 |
MikeGibbs

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athomson - 22 hours ago »
Maybe the humax does not like excessively long file names or non-alphanumeric characters.

.

That's a point. Well, the longest of the mp4's names was 61 chars long, lots have single quotes, left and right round brackets, plusses and minuses an ampersand ...and one had a strange backward single quote (Hex 60).

But...

What on earth would the machine be doing looking at this sort of thing while it's going into standby? It would happily record, playback, ff etc (freeview recordings) all evening then crash while going into standby.

When I say crash I mean that
- It would remove all on-screen stuff, like the mute symbol, but you could see the current freeview program playing.
- There would be no response to any remote buttons.
- There would be no response to any buttons on the front panel.
- The blue light on the front panel would stay on.
One other point; I didn't realise before that a7.31 was the loader version: I have firmare version 1.02.20
| Fri 22 Nov 2013 9:33:26 #8 |
athomson

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That firmware is quite a way behind, you should think about upgrading. You can upgrade via USB, it maybe a good time to think about slapping the custon firmware on top. Other than a disk check in maintence mode with the custom firmware, a system reset without wiping the disk is also one of the things I would try, do not forget to make a note of your recording schedule first. I am lost with the above, sorry. I dont know if anyone else here can help.

Andy

| Fri 22 Nov 2013 11:00:57 #9 |
MikeGibbs

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athomson - 7 hours ago »
That firmware is quite a way behind, you should think about upgrading.

.

Well, I checked on hummy.tv and I'm not encouraged to risk breaking what is not (now) broken.

In essence it says:
- 1.02.20 is the earliest version anyone is likely to be using.
- 1.02.26 was never available for download or OTA.
- 1.02.27 was a beta.
- 1.02.28 is the latest OTA. YouTube is working again but Internet Radio (TV Portal) is now broken.
- 1.02.29 is available for download, but apparently never transmitted as an OTA. It is reported to solve the Internet Radio problem.
- 1.02.32 is reported to have better control over the automatic tuning process. For me 1.02.20 works fine.
- 1.03.06 looks scary as it handles new tuner hardware so how would it cope with the old tuner hardware?
.

Many thanks, Andy, for the suggestion but why would I want to risk 400+ GB of recordings or my wife's sanity by changing to any of these later versions? ...or are there other versions which are more compelling?

Mike.
| Fri 22 Nov 2013 19:10:44 #10 |