Hi all,

Our 4 month old Thomson DTI6300 DVR stopped working today. When it was re-powered there was a blinking red/orange light on the front panel.

I am planning on sending it back - but I am going to try and retrieve recordings/data from it.

I have CAREFULLY opened up the box by removing the single screw at the rear and then CAREFULLY unclicking the plastic 'aesthetical casing' - it's clipped together. The metal box inside was easy to open up. I have removed the 160GB Seagate drive and have successfully mounted it inside a PC running WinXP with Ext2 File System Driver for Windows http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd. I simply guessed that the Thomson DTI6300 would be using some form of EXT filesystem (don't ask me why ;o))

There are 3 partitions. The large partition obviously contains all the video data. There are IFO files and TRP files which are the main video transport streams. Other directories on the drive contain other elements such as BMP and MPG files which are from TopUpTV downloads. These are purely screen banners and other adverts/stills and these are FULLY readable... so no problems accessing usable data from the drive.

However, the main video data has TRP extensions. I have tried literally every tool/utility/player/converter under the sun to try and open these files - alas with absolutely no success what-so-ever.

Does anyone know a way to play these TRP files from the Thomson DTI6300 boxes? Nothing seems to want to open/recognise the data.

Apart from all the above advice and help from numerous other forum posts I just cannot beggin to fathom out my next step.

I would love to get to the bottom of this. Though, my coding knowledge is pretty much defunkt - but my practicality reigns and my inquisitive nature with the 'wanting to know' prevails. Does anybody have any other erudite information they could perhaps share at this stage... I'd hate to give up now.

Tim, if you get to read this post anytime soon, I read all your posts with great interest and trepidation. Thanks for all your information - and I hope you are well and your disability isn't causing you too much unhappiness!

Any help would be appreciated at this time!

Thanks
x

EDIT:

Hi all,

Our 4 month old Thomson DTI6300 DVR stopped working today. These boxes are riddled with bugs - therefore we have had many problems with crashes etc ever since it was taken out of the cardboard box and plugged into the mains. Anyway, the box now refuses to 'boot up' when it was re-powered today after yet another crash. There is now a continuous blinking red/orange light on the front panel. I have tried the usual tech. support fix, which is: Remove from mains power, leave it off for a minute or less, then repower and press the standby button several times. This should invoke the main factory bios startup mode - which apparently reformats the drive ready for the final use of the end consumer.

I am planning on sending it back - but I am going to try and retrieve recordings/data from it.

I have CAREFULLY opened up the box by removing the single screw at the rear and then CAREFULLY unclicking the plastic 'aesthetical casing' - it's clipped together. The metal box inside was easy to open up. I have removed the 160GB Seagate drive and have successfully mounted it inside a PC running WinXP with Ext2 File System Driver for Windows http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd. I simply guessed that the Thomson DTI6300 would be using some form of EXT filesystem (don't ask me why ;o))

There are 3 partitions. The large partition obviously contains all the video data. There are IFO files and TRP files which are the main video transport streams. Other directories on the drive contain other elements such as BMP and MPG files which are from TopUpTV downloads. These are purely screen banners and other adverts/stills and these are FULLY readable... so no problems accessing usable data from the drive.

However, the main video data has TRP extensions. I have tried literally every tool/utility/player/converter under the sun to try and open these files - alas with absolutely no success what-so-ever.

Does anyone know a way to play these TRP files from the Thomson DTI6300 boxes? Nothing seems to want to open/recognise the data.

Apart from all the above advice and help from numerous other forum posts I just cannot beggin to fathom out my next step.

I would love to get to the bottom of this. Though, my coding knowledge is pretty much defunkt - but my practicality reigns and my inquisitive nature with the 'wanting to know' prevails. Does anybody have any other erudite information they could perhaps share at this stage... I'd hate to give up now.

Tim, if you get to read this post anytime soon, I read all your posts with great interest and trepidation. Thanks for all your information - and I hope you are well and your disability isn't causing you too much unhappiness!

Any help would be appreciated at this time!

Thanks
x

Whilst I'm sitting here quietly, socratically thinking to myself - a thought crossed my mind as to who 'Top Up TV Europe Limited' actually are. Maybe this array of companies was founded by greedy and rather dim ex. Hedge Fund criminals with cash to spare to fund such ventures/recycle their cash and wealth. Who knows!?

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudicati..._ADJ_42241.htm

Anyway, this 'company' obviously arranged many other 'companies' to team up with them to design and make the hardware - then get a company like Thomson to manufacture/manage the hardware units. Then they would need software engineers/coders to create (under a strict budget/using Linux skills) the software that make these machines function. Maybe it's a generic base of code; Borrowed scripts and code.

Anyway, my guesses are that these people are just using their cash to make more cash by ripping simple people off with unpolished products: Unveil the Thomson DTI6300. Yet another money making scam ripping off the poor with lousy/half-working products they didn't finance properly [see paragraph 1].

Grrr!!!!

don't know if you will find an answer,i got one of these boxes the other day cheaply,below shop price,i was aware of all the bad reviews before buying,but i don't mind a technical challenge and i like taking boxes apart and making adjustments,from day one i was interested in removing recordings so far i've found no answers on the net.
I think you have done better than some others to reach the stage you are at,but if no one is doing the same as you,which appears to be the case,reading the files could be the hard part as if no one wants to read or modify trp files no one would invent a software,there is some amazing software around for every possible thing you can think of so you may get there in the end.
If it is in any way a protected file you will face another hurdle.
added this bit after looking round the net
here is a link about trp
http://dvbportal.dyn1.de/forum/index...y;threadid=412
and this
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic340287.html

one person is suggesting convertx to dvd on the video help comments
another is suggesting Videoredo
and there is gordian knot too

so there are your answers.And we both learnt something in the process.

No, it was founded by 2 ex-Sky employees back in 2003 as an alternative to Sky.

You ought to be careful what you say on a public forum, as it could be seen as libelous


The software is coded by TUTV engineers that post both on DS, and on Kafkas TUTV forums


Erm, no, it's a legitimate company that has been in business for 5 years, and provided a subscription service on DTT for the last 4 years...and is going from strength to strength. They have recently launched a service on DTT in France, and are expanding the Top Up TV Anytime service over here

Is Project X one of the ones you tried?

to follow on from all that i've written,i've now done the same as you, took the hard drive out,copied the contents of the drive to pc and tried these 3 programmes above to read the trp files.
None of them could do anything with these files,are they all mpeg 4 do you think?as that seems to be the reason they are not readable,and according to what i've read if they are mpeg 4 you won't find anything to read them,if they were mpeg 2 they'd be readable.
see here
http://old.totalfta.com/forums/thread61597.html

It was some time ago and I can't remember much about it, but while trying to edit various movies I found that AVSVideoConverter4 was a useful one, also found this free prog and wonder if it might be of interest: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mp4cam2avi/

and I stored some info which mentions codecs:
"USING MP4Cam2AVI For Mpeg4 clips, to allow WinMovieMaker to be used for editing etc. Otherwise: Just rename .mov as .avi files.
("Morgan M-JPEG codec” may have to be installed but try first without it, because you may already have a suitable codec installed)
Comment: “After installing it and rebooting I looked in my WinMovieMaker codec list (Tools/Options/Compatability) and it wasn't there. I opened the avi (nee mov) file in wmm and it accepted it and compressed it to wmv with no problem. Now the Morgan shows up in my wmm codec list. I guess you have to run it one time"

There seems to be a thread here about this

http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/...st/034519.html