I understand the costs involved in licensing codecs but it would appear that there is no support for open source codecs ie .ogg and png - given the device is gpl-linux based this seems particularly odd.

I also find it strange given that the box uses E2fsprogs that it only supports fat32 formated external drives. (it also appears to only support usb stick drives and not usb enabled SSD drives).

I also do not understand why there is no ability to playback conventional mpeg2/4 files as the codec license has obviously been paid for.

Firstly, it is not a 'media player' type of device, so why should anyone expect it to support multiple media formats?

Secondly, it supports EXT2/3* as well as FAT16/32 filesystems.

*Except, it currently does not work with EXT2

Thank you son_t for pointing out the ext2/3 support - this addresses the 4gig limit of fat32 ( NTFS support would be welcome though )

Could the SSD not work because of the usb implementation - is it USB 2.0 full speed or high speed or USB 1.0?

Someone may not consider it a 'media player', but...
- the marketing material states that it can play music and show pictures,
- the hard drive has space allocated to this function,
- the menu has functions to play/view both.
As stated in my original post, given that ogg and png require no fee it is unfortunate that support for them has not been included. Also whilst the marketing clearly states support for mp3 and jpg unless it says only mp3 & jpg others like myself may think this indicates general support

The inability to play standard mpeg 2/4 content is more puzzling to me, as again as I stated in my first post the codecs have been licensed, so why the seemingly artificial restriction?

As I understand it NTFS support is now included in Linux so would there be a cost ?

Last year I upgraded the hard drive in my laptop. This left me with a working 30 gb spare laptop hard drive. I purchased a Sweex box from Misco This converts the hard drive to a usb and effectively gave me a 30 gb usb which is now very useful for using with the Foxsat HDR. It makes for easy transfer of music, digital files to the Foxsat and transfer of programmes recorded on the Foxsat to the PC.

The great bonus is that music, photos and programmes stored on the usb can be played directly from the usb without the need to transfer them to the Foxsat. The hard drive in the Sweex box is powered by the usb connection without the need for separate power supply. Note that I formatted the hard drive to Ext3 - but bear in mind this can only be read by a computer running linux - it cannot normally be read by a windows machine.

It's certainly not usb 1.0. You can play BBC HD directly from the usb no problem.

I think this is a foolish assumption (You can return a product if the manufacturer/seller claims it does something that it can not, i.e. that you've been mislead, not that you've interpreted what it does wrongly ) When retailing a device, you list what it can do, not what it can't (as well!)

Primarily, the Humax HDR is a Freesat DR recording device. You should not purchase the box for its other 'gimmicky' facilities... And to quote the wise cat: "... I would never buy a product based on future functionality otherwise it is a less than wise investment." (I thought this is worth stating again, in case you want Humax to implement support for those other media formats )

[I've a modded (original) Xbox and it plays and supports playback of many video and audio files. Unfortunately, it does not receive Freeview or Freesat and does not record. But I would not even think to complain about this lack of recording facilities and question why MS fail to support more media formats than it does (without modification), even though it sold itself as supporting audio and video playback...]

You can get an EXT2/3 file system driver for Windows from www.ext2fsd.com

Tried this but there is a snag. To use it the drive has to be unmounted under linux. The foxsat does not unmount the drive so you need a linux booted PC to unmount it which kind of defeats the object as while in linux you can copy files to a ntfs partition

With respect to USB flash drives, what we have found is that not all USB sticks were created equal, so we have gone to great lengths to try and cover as many as possible. When we first tried to use USB sticks the number that successfully worked was quite low, but after some work that number has increased but it still isn't 100%.

The manufacturers of USB sticks clearly test them against Windows, Mac and other mainstream platform, then they fix their code until the device works. However I am not always sure that the standards are implemented cleanly so not all drives are successful. The good thing is that we have found that the majority of USB devices from mainstream manufacturers perform well and this covers the majority of the market.