Anyway - I decided to play with the USB last night to see what extra things it would do - beyond my 2 9200's.

Obviously you can plug a Hard Disk or Pen Memory in - formatted in FAT32.

You can transfer stuff to and from the external thing - it likes MP3 but won't play MP2.

But if you plug a normal USB Hub in - this one was a cheapo I got from SVP - the Freesat will see every USB you plug in - as USB1 USB2 USB3 etc - and you can use 'Device Change' to switch between them.

So, boringly enough, you can plug a whole load lots in semi permanently - move stuff on and off the HDD - have a download extl HDD that can play the stuff back as though it was on the Freesat - one for Music - one for Video.

And the other magic thing is that, unlike the 9200, you can use the File Manager type thing when it's recording - although you still can't Delete!

The 9200 would let you play music while it was record so it hobbled it a bit as a Media Centre.

If you can do that over the Ethernet on the next! upgrade, and play MPEG2 stuff, it will be just a wow.

That should have said that the 9200 WOULDN'T let you play music - or photos for that matter - when it was recording!

Sorry

Editing the original post would have been quicker

Can't believe on the 10 months that the hdrs been on the market that AFAIK no one else has tried this. Great Post

Tried this and it works great. This got me going for a couple of minutes. Then it dawned you have to cursor into the usb window and press opt+ to reveal the device list. And guess what you can even switch the pane to display the HDD. No more disconnecting the usb to create folders and move stuff around on the hdd.

You can use the front and rear usb ports the same way without a hub

I've noticed this before and thought it was common knowledge but I hadn't realised connecting a hub would offer multiple ports mind you I don't own a USB hub so I couldn't of tried it anyway.. There was a thread way back I think germanycalling asked if connecting to both front and back USBs whether you could transfer between the two without first copying to the HDD and I tried at the time noting that you could only switch devices on the right hand pane and not change the HDD left pane.

Missed that one GC . Suspect it will be a surprise to others as well. In the past have always disconnected usb to mess with the hdd, never knew you could switch devices.

I've found a USB hub I forgot I owned but it seems the stb will only support a maximum of 4 additional devices at a time (HDD + USB1 to 4) any more connected and the box tells you it cannot read usb device and to use a supported format.

It's still magic - good point though - I'll accept 4 USB - all I want now is a Toppy style thing that lets you produce playlists for Music and it'll be great but I think that's unlikely - even when the upgrade comes!

Remind me what is the biggest FAT32 disk you can have.

Up to now I've used VRD to clean the stuff up for showing - converting to MPEG2 but if I can easily keep whole series - unedited on an external disk - with Folders - that will playback on the Humax - even when it's recording.........

I couldn't easily play them back on a 9200 - I've used a Media Player box or PC.

One further point - will such an external disk - copied on one Freesat play back on another - to lend to to other users?

8Tb but I would use EXT3 for anything significant

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463

You need a 3rd party format programme to go bigger than 32Gb when formatting under windows

SD can be freely played back on other hdrs but encrypted HD only on the hdr it was recorded on.

Thanks for that - I was going to ask about 'swapping' HD stuff.

A little off USB topic - but external related.

I use 'FNet Utilities' to format my FAT disks - it works well but I can't remember the FAT 32 max - MS seem to make a lot of the 32G but I've got bigger disks than that - 160G+.

Put me straight - an EXT3 disk will be OK for Freesat and Ubuntu - but not for Windows?

I've got an Ubuntu PC - wonderful - would it stream an EXT3 disk to my network so that I can watch EXT3/ts files on a Windows PC!!! I already stream some videos using a Dell PC attached to my TV.

You can get EXT3 drivers for windows but there is a snag all the ones I have tried require the disk be properly unmounted before they will mount on a pc, the hdr does not unmount the drive. The file system used has no effect on the file data just the system the PC uses to find it. So any drive on your network visible on a remote PC should be able to stream files irrespective of the file system.

You can swap unencrypted HD files recorded in non-freesat mode and also play them back from usb. FAT32 4Gb file limit means EXT3 must be used for all but the smallest HD file

Hmm, It seems the purchase of another 1 or 2 1Tb drives just got moved up the want list. Cheers! The prospect of swapping and having a backup to my precious archive is too much to resist.
BTW do you or anyone know if >1Tb works as an external USB device? Other posts indicate that an internal drive >1Tb does not work, but is there an external limit?

Bob_Cat (and others) were talking in another thread about alternative MHEG applications to do extra things with a box. Would there be any way to run a user-written MHEG app from the USB port (or internal HD if you copied the file across).

I appreciate that there might not be much of an API publicly described to allow you to do Freesat style things (though would be nice to do) but you could at least write some games (and once the ethernet port functionality came along, you could write widgets to display you share portfolio value etc. (Full integration would provide a "Your RBS shares are collapsing - Press RED to sell!" and pause Live TV for you ...

Seriously, user-written MHEG would be interesting.

GermanyCalling we are relying in you to find out . At the moment though on a price per Tb 1 Tb seems to be the cheapest option. Rather than using USB I simply swap in one of 3 drives into the external esata caddy.

My enthusiasm has waned. Seems I mis-read your post so that it said what I wanted to hear! I thought you were claiming that you can copy between USB devices using a hub. Having played with this concept I have been unable to find a way to make the left hand pane anything other than HDD. Have I missed a trick here? Its such a pain to copy stuff onto the hard drive and then back to the place you need it. It is actually less hassle to connect both devices to my PC and with trusty Linux just drag and drop between two windows.

Sorry GermanyCalling as you say you can't copy between multiple usb drives just leave more than 1 connected and select whichever you want (handy for building an off hdr playable archive). However have you seen this thread

http://www.hummy.org.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=6218

You can now use windoze to transfer files from a EXT3 volume straight from a hdr

I wonder now, if I change the internal hard drive will it handle more than 1tb.
I want to change mine, and have held back in the hope that when the upgrade comes, it will work with more that 1tb.

From this thread it appears not http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...php?p=34187356

Decided to use some of my Xmas bonus ( no I'm not a banker by profession or Cockney rhyming slang ) on a 1.5 TB USB external drive. Took ages to format to EXT3 but ........ it works on the Humax.! For interest it's a Samsung Story Station and cost 99Euros. Got a 1TB Hitachi at the same time for 66Euros, so cost per Terabyte has dropped here for the larger drives.
I'm sure the $ky fans will be along in a bit telling us that they can archive to a 2 TB external drive in NTFS
Last edited by germanycalling : 14-12-2009 at 21:05

HI GC presumably you have not tried such a device as a replacement for the internal drive ? Interesting though it works externally.

My original plan was to wait until the warranty has expired before swapping the internal drive. However as it is now possible to play BBC HD direct from an external drive my need to change the internal drive has diminished.When the existing hard drive becomes cluttered with ITV HD stuff then I may review the situation.
Do you happen to know which flavour of Linux is on the Humax? The reason I ask is I'm playing with Debian on my home PC at the moment and I am unable to mount the new 1.5 TB drive. My old trusty 1TB mounts with no problem. Thus I was happy that the Humax would detect the 1.5TB drive and read and write to it. Thus I wonder if Debian has a >1TB limit?

I don't have a clue as to the flavour I am afraid.

Have stuffed another hard drive in my PC and loaded Ubuntu. Works with the 1.5TB external drive without problem. Next challenge is to get the Video Viewer to work with a (HD) .ts file and I'm sorted!