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Buying a NAS - any advice for use with Humax and recommendations?

G

geordie

Member
Hi

I've decided to get a NAS drive to put my humax recordings onto it and non-humax stuff too.
I'm expecting my NAS to be about 12Tb.

I have a HDR Fox T2 and it has the latest custom interface.
Some of my recordings are currently on a USB HDD and were copied there using the web interface. I have the auto-unprotect package installed.

I will be backing up files from the Humax and playing them through the Humax (sounds obvious but I thought I'd say it for completeness). So I am essentially just using it as a very large external hard drive. I do not have any other media players.

I've read the NAS threads and I think the advice is to make the Humax attach to it like a usb drive - is that right?
Can anyone suggest a NAS that they have used and are ok with and will work with the Humax?
What do I have to do with my Humax to get it to work with the NAS?
If I copy files to the NAS and I have to replace the Humax, can they be seen by a replacement Fox T2 (I have read threads about the "unable to decrypt recording" messages) - and can I run any utilities to fix the files.

Thanks
 
OK. Here goes.

Recordings are encrypted and, unless decrypted first, can only be played back on the machine that they were recorded on. So if you were to copy encrypted recordings to your NAS and the Humax box failed irreparably, then you could not just copy back the recordings to a replacement unit and expect them to play. Having said that, I believe that there is a way to decrypt recordings by other means, but it is time consuming.

I have a QNAP TVS-471 (4 bay unit with 4 WD Red 3TB HDD in RAID0) connected to my network (no surprise there!). Both my active HDRs are also network connected via Ethernet.

Both my active HDRs are set to automatically decrypt recordings between 04:00 - 04:45 and 14:00 - 14:30 each day.

I use a program on my PC (Windows 10 -1803) called Syncovery to copy over all recordings from the HDRs to my NAS but to leave the original recordings on the HDRs.

On the NAS I also have a Plex Media Server running. This enables me to watch/catch up on any recording I like, wherever I am.

Having said all that, I rarely use it to watch anything, it’s mainly used a a back up for SWMBO. However, it does work.
 
geordie said:
I have the auto-unprotect package installed.
Click to expand...
You need to look into decryption because IIRC 'auto-unprotect' does not actually decrypt the file but just allows it to be decrypted by removing the 'do not decrypt' flag.
But also please note Wallace's first para re encrypted stuff.
 
Things Every... (click) section 5, and follow the links to further reading.

This is really a custom firmware question, so should be in the custom firmware section of the forum.

The CF facilities are perfectly capable of routinely decrypting recordings (WebIF autodecrypt)*, and then moving them across to a NAS (network-shares-automount, virtual-disk2, sweeper). With the NAS mounted (as if a USB drive), individual recordings can be moved by hand and/or played back as if they were local.

* Recordings don't have to be decrypted for off-box storage, but if not they are not playable by anything else. If decrypted, the NAS files can be accessed by anything (and so can the on-box recordings - samba or nfs-utils).
 
I have a Synology DX1513+ with 64TB. I use network-shares-automount so my HDR's see the NAS an external USB drive. You can also use sweeper or rsync to automatically archive recordings. If you are automatically decrypting your recordings then they will playback on any device including a replacement T2 that can play .TS files ok. I have not got round to it yet but my plan is to use Plex or something similar to organise all my recorded content and use streaming video players as the clients.
 
Thanks.

It looks like I have misunderstood how the decryption works. This is my starting point - or I'll just have a large library of potentially useless files. I know that if I replace the humax hdd then I can still play my recordings (as MAC and S/N remain constant) but might have to replace the box in the future, who knows.

I cannot see me using the NAS to play files on any other device except Humax or by double clicking on the files on my PC.
 
I built my own NAS using OmniOS as the operating system and a small system with 4 disk bays on the front. It means I can easily run decryption on the NAS itself once the files have been pushed up from the Humax and it is much faster. There's a web interface for managing OmniOS as a NAS - https://napp-it.org/

Now that we know how to derive the decryption key then as long as you make a note of the system serial number and MAC address, you can always batch decrypt them in the future should you need to replace the box.
 
Not a bad idea - might note them down first.

Is the S/N available from a command or do I have to look for the label (just because its going to be an uncabling nightmare lol) ?
 
geordie said:
Not a bad idea - might note them down first.

Is the S/N available from a command or do I have to look for the label (just because its going to be an uncabling nightmare lol) ?
Click to expand...
It is is shown on the webif home page, the MAC address is shown on the Remote Scheduling settings page.
Serial nu,mber and encryption key are shown on the Diagnostics page

No need to leave your seat
 
geordie said:
... I cannot see me using the NAS to play files on any other device except Humax or by double clicking on the files on my PC.
Click to expand...

In case 2 (opening Humax recorded file from PC), you will only succeed without decrypting the file if it is being served by the original Humax HDR-T2 (or one faked to have the same key), via DLNA in some guise. If the PC video player opens the recorded file directly, it has no way to decrypt the file. So, since CF lets you decrypt the file, why not let it do so. See https://wiki.hummy.tv/wiki/Encryption.

Incidentally, @Black Hole, should your link "Things Every HD-FOX T2/HDR-FOX T2 Owner Should Know#5" as above link to that wiki page? Also @Ezra Pound, there are typos "encypt" in the text and "Unencypt" in the diagram, and maybe the final bullet point under 'Custom Firmware' should link to the relevant wiki page https://wiki.hummy.tv/wiki/Decrypt_recordings_on_the_HD-FOX_T2? Finally, neither text clarifies explicitly that Opt+ RC copy to/from a mounted network drive decrypts in the same way as with a USB drive.

Returning to topic. you said you would put non-Humax stuff on your NAS, so I would expect you to have the Humax, the NAS and the PC as separate LAN nodes, using NFS or Samba to make various directories on the NAS available to the Humax and the PC. Unless you will only archive the Humax recordings to the NAS using the remote control's Opt+ Copy, you'll need to either decrypt the files on the Humax or run a decryption program on the NAS à la af123, or run a decryption program on your PC having mounted the NAS recording archive directory.
 
/df said:
Incidentally, @Black Hole, should your link "Things Every HD-FOX T2/HDR-FOX T2 Owner Should Know#5" as above link to that wiki page?
Click to expand...
No, because I think I did a much better job with my article on decryption (which is linked in Section 5). I defy anybody to work out what's going on from that diagram. Also, EP refuses to link to anything of mine, although I link to the wiki when appropriate. And finally, having my articles in my posts means I have control of them. So now you know.
 
prpr said:
Which raid level do you run?
Click to expand...
On there, effectively 10 (it's ZFS-based so it's not quite the same). RAIDZ would be possible too if I wanted more space, but my strategy is to replace the drives every few years with larger ones. Having had a lot of data stored on ZFS over the years and seen the things that it fixes which would otherwise go undetected, I wouldn't use anything else.
 
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I am keen on FreeNAS (another ZFS based system). Rather memory hungry though. Still runs on my test NAS - a now ancient HP Microserver (AMD Athlon(tm) II Neo N36L Dual-Core Processor).
 
Black Hole said:
Things Every... (click) section 5, and follow the links to ....
Click to expand...

This text says
Standard Definition recordings are decrypted when copied to a USB drive (using the OPT+ button on the remote control handset)

So if I copy files to the USB using the webif clipboard, are standard definition recordings decrypted too?

I've done this a bit so looking for a solution to that.
 
geordie said:
So if I copy files to the USB using the webif clipboard, are standard definition recordings decrypted too?
Click to expand...
No! Where does it say that's one of the methods? USING THE OPT+ BUTTON ON THE REMOTE CONTROL HANDSET

Have you bothered to follow the link to the full explanation??
 
Black Hole said:
No! Where does it say that's one of the methods? USING THE OPT+ BUTTON ON THE REMOTE CONTROL HANDSET

Have you bothered to follow the link to the full explanation??
Click to expand...
Those files were already moved using the clipboard before I read the explanation.

So if I want to use the clipboard, is the solution to decrypt them using the auto-decrypt, then move using the clipboard.

I also need to decrypt the files already on the usb drive. As these were copied via the clipboard, I am assuming that they are still encrypted. So is there a way I can go through a folder on the USB drive and decrypt everything in the usb folder.
 
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Thanks

Is there no solution to decrypting the files while they are on the usb itself? Perhaps running a script against all the files in a folder?
 
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