Hi,

How many hours HD recording are you getting from your Foxsat HDR 320GB?

With nothing recorded to the drive and the video/radio partition maxed out leaving 1.0GB for music/photo my Foxsat HDR is reporting only 37 hours in HDD Control. Seems on the low side to me?

Full report in HDD Control:

Video/Radio

Free 303.4GB (97%)
(SD: 151 hours HD: 37 hours)

Used 8.2GB (3%)

Music/Photo

Free 1.0GB (97%)
Used 0.0GB (3%)

Cheers
Steve1322.

This is very hard to answer because it purely depends on the average bitrate used by the channel you are recording. When the hdr was launched BBC-HD used about 17 mpbs (17 million bits/second), without getting into the technical details average bitrate for HD channels is now about 10mbps or lower

8 bits is one byte, so dividing 10/8 gives about 0.8MB/sec or about 4.5GB per hour of HD which gives approx about 70hrs of HD, But not all of the 320GB is available depending to some extent how much you have allocated to music/jpeg storage. However if you have a Foxsat-hdr you can archive unlimited storage to usb and replay from their (most HD requires EXT3 file system)

''However if you have a Foxsat-hdr you can archive unlimited storage to usb and replay from their (most HD requires EXT3 file system)''
I have had several goes at trying to save recordings to an external HDD via USB but without success. Following instructions in the hanbook does not bear any resemblance to what appears on the screen. I know its the operator!

Connect the usb device and wait for the recognised message.

Press Media opt+ and choose file manager. The usb device icon will be in the right hand pane. Cursor right to the icon and press OK to open the drive to it's root folder.

Cursor left and move to a file, press green to copy it to usb

Replay of files on usb, press media then red, cursor right to change to the usb drive. Replay is the same as from the internal HDD.

IIRC there's something quite bizarre about the UI.

You need to go to the right hand pane and 'select' the USB drive before you can select the file you want to copy and get the appropriate 'button' enabled.

It's not really odd, until you tell the hdr where to send it (it could be a sub-folder of the usb device or you may have more than one usb device connected). If you had a mouse drag and drop would be a possibility.

Yes, I suppose it's not so much bizarre as just not very obvious if you only have one device connected and it has no folders.

If I remember correctly Linux uses destination/source (to/from) logic in command line copies opposite to DOS source/destination (from/to). Very rusty though

Correct.

It's something that's always caused confusion for people using multiple operating systems. (Similarly whether case is significant in file names )

On the very first OS I used you actually had to insert the delimiter 'to' between the source and the destination so that no one was in any doubt.

the standard Linux copy (cp) and move (mv) commands use the same source/destination order as the DOS copy command.

Now I am even more confused (posts 8 & 9).

Yes, sorry, it was CPM which did it the other way around!

That's where the confusion came from, used to play with CPM+ as well on a Amstrad PCW (happy days ). Thanks for the memory jog

Thanks grahamlthompson for your reply.

So what is my Foxsat actually reporting?

With nothing recorded to the drive and the video/radio partition maxed out leaving 1.0GB for music/photo.

Full report in HDD Control:

Video/Radio:

Free 303.4GB (97%)
(SD: 151 hours HD: 37 hours)

Used 8.2GB (3%)

Music/Photo:

Free 1.0GB (97%)
Used 0.0GB (3%)

Do I have room in the Video/Radio partiton for approx 151 hours of SD and 37 hours of HD or only 151 hours SD only or 37 hours of HD only.

This figure of 37 hours for HD recording is bugging me. As you say approx 70 hours should be possible.

Cheers
steve1322
Last edited by steve1322 : 14-02-2011 at 20:46

The estimate from the firmware is based on the original bitrate used by BBC-HD when the Foxsat was launched (around 17 mbps). fta channel bitrates are now much lower so there is more space for recordings than the hdr indicates. It's not possible to give an exact figure because the use of vbr( Variable Bit Rate) and statmuxing (dynamically sharing the total available bitrate on a transponder according to video content) means that an exact figure is impossible. Simple answer make say 4 x 1hr recordings of HD and see how much the percentage available goes down. The missing 3% is most likely the fixed size 0.ts file you can't see used as the time shift buffer.

Thanks grahamlthompson.

It all makes more sense now.

Cheers

steve1322.