[[THC]B4TM4N]

Hello everyone,
I've been following the "using the humax 9200t with a pc" and am gratefull for all the information regarding transfering from the humax to dvd which is quite straightforward (apart from usb errors). Now has anyone managed to do the reverse? The method of overwriting a video file that already exists on the 9200t works like a charm.
Trying to figure out how to encode media that will play is not so easy well for me anyway (Channel is scrambled or unplayable is the msg i have got on the tv from my many attempts)

Tried using videolan to create Transport stream files which is a no go.
Tried using elecard xmuxer pro to do the same which also didnt work.
Acording the media player classic the files are encoded with Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (16:9) 25.00fps 15000Kbps
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps

Elecard xmuxer reports 3 streams in the following way (this might be irrelavent but i thought i'd include it anyway)

Program #4168
> Audio (PID 601 @ Prog #4168)
> Audio (PID 602 @ Prog #4168)
> Video (PID 600 @ Prog #4168)


Any ideas?

[martinlong1978]

The Hummy isn't a media player. Normally when people do this, it corrupts the hard drive.

[[THC]B4TM4N]

Are you serious? Am thinking i should have spent the extra £40 on a toppy (Normally when people do this does that mean people have done it and got it to work? if so how?)

[CJL]

Originally Posted by [THC]B4TM4N

Are you serious? Am thinking i should have spent the extra £40 on a toppy (Normally when people do this does that mean people have done it and got it to work? if so how?)

If you want to get video back INTO the box then, yes, the Toppy would have been the machine to get. The PC to Humax direction for the 9200 is really just for JPGs and MP3s (a bit of research here at DS pre-purchase would have told you this - though I guess that doesn't help now)

Like Martin, I'd have said the best way to get PC content onto your telly is with some form of UpnP media streamer in fact though I'd maybe network it with HomePlug rather than relying on 802.11 ('course if you can run a Cat5 cable that'd be better yet!)

Cliff

[martinlong1978]

Originally Posted by [THC]B4TM4N

Are you serious? Am thinking i should have spent the extra £40 on a toppy (Normally when people do this does that mean people have done it and got it to work? if so how?)

Yeah. People have done it. I personally haven't, but I've looked into it... there are threads around telling you how to do it... it's a bit of a hack. The USB interface is only supposed to transfer video FROM the hummy, and mp3/pics to the hummy. I don't think it's advertised to do any more than that (although it would be good if it at least did that properly). You never know, they might be able to get this sorted, but the decoder in the Hummy is quite strict, requiring a very strict mpeg2 TS input.

The two audio channels by the way are the true audio, and also some programs have a narrative audio (for the visually impared).

[[THC]B4TM4N]

Gave up on video transfer's but i just transfered some mp3's to the hummy and now my image folder is full of garbage with negative files sizes and unreadable folder names. Is this the start of something?

[marcdavis]

Originally Posted by [THC]B4TM4N

Gave up on video transfer's but i just transfered some mp3's to the hummy and now my image folder is full of garbage with negative files sizes and unreadable folder names. Is this the start of something?

In that case I would select its partition in elinker and format it and then put images onto it.

[DJjay18]

Originally Posted by CJL

If you want to get video back INTO the box then, yes, the Toppy would have been the machine to get.

What can be done on the Toppy with putting media on then? What files can it play (Divx?) and how easy is it to get everything transferred and working?

[CJL]

Originally Posted by DJjay18

What can be done on the Toppy with putting media on then? What files can it play (Divx?) and how easy is it to get everything transferred and working?

www.toppy.org.uk for the answers to this and probably anything else you can think to ask about a Topfield 5800!

Cliff

[DJjay18]

Thanks Cliff, but in short?...

[[THC]B4TM4N]

Will the hummy play what the toppy encodes? .rec?
( Dont think i'm gunna be the one to try stuff after my step towards corruption)
Can i just format the mp3/image partition (elinker? if so i must have missed that option) i tried all sorts to get it to delete the random files. i was considering using the inbuilt menu format hdd option but i dont want to loose my video recordings.

[Barry.Williams]

Originally Posted by CJL

If you want to get video back INTO the box then, yes, the Toppy would have been the machine to get. The PC to Humax direction for the 9200 is really just for JPGs and MP3s (a bit of research here at DS pre-purchase would have told you this - though I guess that doesn't help now)

Like Martin, I'd have said the best way to get PC content onto your telly is with some form of UpnP media streamer in fact though I'd maybe network it with HomePlug rather than relying on 802.11 ('course if you can run a Cat5 cable that'd be better yet!)

Cliff

If it can accept JPEG & MP3's then it has to be capable of vidio file. Whether a file is in JPEG, MP3, WAV or whatever else makes no difference to the hard disk.

I suspect that if people are having problems with vidio its probably down to the data rate over the USB cable and port. Slowing down the transfer rate may well enable people to copy vidio to the hard disk. I suspect it may be quite a slow process though.

Does the HUMAX use USB1 or USB2 standard ?

[jda180hm]

Originally Posted by Barry.Williams

If it can accept JPEG & MP3's then it has to be capable of vidio file. Whether a file is in JPEG, MP3, WAV or whatever else makes no difference to the hard disk.

I suspect that if people are having problems with vidio its probably down to the data rate over the USB cable and port. Slowing down the transfer rate may well enable people to copy vidio to the hard disk. I suspect it may be quite a slow process though.

Does the HUMAX use USB1 or USB2 standard ?

File format makes no difference to the disk, but a lot of difference to the inbuilt software on the PVR. The Hummy is only designed to support ONE video format - the date stream as broadcast on Freeview.
If you want a box that supports many different video formats then we'd recommend a "media server" as mentioned above.

I'll make no comment on USB as this is extremely well documented elsewhere in this Humax forum.

Jonathan

[CJL]

Originally Posted by Barry.Williams

If it can accept JPEG & MP3's then it has to be capable of vidio file. Whether a file is in JPEG, MP3, WAV or whatever else makes no difference to the hard disk.

Have you tried it? If you read the numerous posts from people here who have you'll find that it is quite possible to get a file into the box but getting it into the right format and persuading it to actually play the file is quite another matter!

Cliff

[mfmf]

The real problem is getting it to appear in the list of recordings. I suspect that this list is not just a list of filenames, but some of meta-data stored in a table somewhere. The true filenames are not made public. (Presumably, this is why Humax have provided the eLinker software, rather than simply making the disk appear as an external drive.)

It seems that with eLinker, Humax have implemented part of what is required to allow video to be transferred to the PVR (i.e. you can copy files onto the disk), but have not implemented the bit that updates the index. So, your file will sit on the disk, but will not be playable because it will not appear in the index. Furthermore, the fact that the index no longer corresponds exactly with what is on the disk means that the PVR is likely to get confused and start to do strange things to your file system.

[jda180hm]

Originally Posted by mfmf

......Furthermore, the fact that the index no longer corresponds exactly with what is on the disk means that the PVR is likely to get confused and start to do strange things to your file system.

This would explain some of the early purchasers of Hummys reporting that they could corrupt their hard drives at will just by uploading files onto the video partition.

Just checked the manaul and it only talks about "enjoying your music and photos loaded from a PC" and no mention of transferring videos from PC to Hummy. The manual then refers to the CD, and the only documentation is the CD case insert which says the same thing.

Which means that nowhere in the PVR9200T documentation does it state you can transfer video files in either direction.

Which brings us back to the "quality" of the e-linker software - just because it lets you do something, doesn't mean it's supported!

I should have read the manual!

(Edit - checked Humax website and it does say:

USB 2.0 connectivity for PC
MPEG A/V file transfer between Duovisio and a PC
Digital photo album and slide show
MP3 player
Free CD of PC application 'Media e-linker'

Which isn't very helpful as a full specification in the absence of anything else.

[keithatrochdale]

I get the impression from talking to Humax that they did not intend people to upload vido to the Hummy, in fact they were worried people would try this. Could this be why the .mp3s and .jpgs are in a seperate partition on the HDD?

[mfmf]

Originally Posted by keithatrochdale

I get the impression from talking to Humax that they did not intend people to upload vido to the Hummy, in fact they were worried people would try this. Could this be why the .mp3s and .jpgs are in a seperate partition on the HDD?

No. They're in different partitions because the disk block size is different (very large for video, smaller for mp3's and jpeg's).

[keithatrochdale]

I just wish they would hurry up sorting the USB link, I bet a lot of poeple are just waiting for it to be sorted so thay can backup to their PCs..........

I have lost the HDD once, keeping my fingers crossed it is sorted before it happens again!

Come on Hummy, what's happening?????????

What about the recovery tool that was mentioned?

And don't you get REALLY pizzed-off trying to edit programme names when you have a PC there with a keyboard, not too much to expect e-linker to do , is it?????

[gadgetmind]

Yup, I'd love to be able to back everything up, but the USB is slow/broken. :-(

Renaming is a bit of a pain - they should produce an Ir keyboard and sell it directly rather than via distribution. You can make big bucks this way.

Ian

[[THC]B4TM4N]

My 2 an 1/2 cents worth would be: (kinda recap)
1 ) Why give you access to an upload button(elinker) on the video partition?
2 ) It still can fcuk up on any transfer 2 or from your hummy as i found out. Even if its just a standard mp3 transfer. (Other people have experienced this without playing with any video files so on the grounds of "you play with the video files your asking for trouble i'm unclear/undescided" no proof either way)


As for video testing "the rename to existing file name then over write method works" As to the safety of using this procedure i cannot condone it as safe as many people have pointed out this is still unsupported.
Interesting to note however the filesizes do change when you do use the same name overwrite method (for a big file over a small file). And if you over-write a large video file with a smaller one they dont change(it also preserves the remainder of the video not overwritten) So it does update some index's/meta data.

Bottom line £200 too much to lose as i've only had the damn thing a couple of weeks.