HD Fox T2 poor experience watching HDR recordings over network

O

Owen Smith

Well-Known Member
My parents have an HDR Fox T2 with custom firmware, and an HD Fox T2. Wired ethernet for both of them and to the broadband so no wifi issues.

The HD Fox T2 is for adding a DVB-T2 tuner to the upstairs TV, and for watching recordings from the HDR. But they've done a lot less of the latter because the remote playback experience is so poor. They expect it to look and behave the same as playing directly on the HDR, and it does not.

What can I install on the HDR that will improve the situation? They're currently using the built in media sharing on the HDR.

Custom Firmware on the HD would ideally be avoided for this. It doesn't have any at present and it's a complication I don't want. It would have to be on a USB stick not a hard disc, and I understand that tends not to work very well as the Flash wears out. If the live playback buffer and ability to make recordings on the HD could be disabled that would be fine, no interest in using either of those.
 
CF on the HD is the only option.
Then you either need to decrypt everything on the HDR or synchronise the keys between HDR and HD.
Then share folders via Samba (or NFS). Foxlink has its own problems but might do - it's a bit dim and loss of the link or the HDR going away usually makes it crash (and you can't disable it without uninstalling it).
Install a small SSD via USB-SATA adapter if you don't trust USB sticks.
You can indeed disable the timeshift buffer. You can also not mark the SSD for recording and then it won't.
 
Well that's not what I wanted to hear, but at least I know. I'll start by enquiring if the different UI experience really is the problem or if actually my parents just don't want/need to do this often after all.

I'd not thought of using a small SSD on a USB to SATA adaptor, thanks for that. I even have a spare 512GB Samsung PRO SSD, not small and certainly not cheap but it is spare.

The daft thing is Humax advertised this as a feature of the HD Fox T2. How could they advertise it as a feature and do such a poor job of the implementation? Finding the recording you want to watch is a nightmare.
 
Owen Smith said:
The daft thing is Humax advertised this as a feature of the HD Fox T2. How could they advertise it as a feature and do such a poor job of the implementation? Finding the recording you want to watch is a nightmare.
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Nonetheless, it offers DLNA playback and that's what you get.

The easiest thing to do is use CF on the HD-FOX to give it the same key as the HDR-FOX, and then make the HDR-FOX appear as a USB drive on the HD-FOX. I prefer network-shares-automount over foxlink.
 
Black Hole said:
Nonetheless, it offers DLNA playback and that's what you get.

The easiest thing to do is use CF on the HD-FOX to give it the same key as the HDR-FOX, and then make the HDR-FOX appear as a USB drive on the HD-FOX. I prefer network-shares-automount over foxlink.
Click to expand...

Hmm, the HD Fox T2 advertising offered playback from HDR over network. To the average man in the street that means the user experience will be the same. "It's not the same!" was the first thing my parents said when I demo'd it to them. I wouldn't have bought an HD Fox T2 if I had known the user experience of network playback was so different.

I really don't want to use CF on HD Fox T2. It has no internal hard disc so CF is a pain in the neck on it.
 
Owen Smith said:
I really don't want to use CF on HD Fox T2. It has no internal hard disc so CF is a pain in the neck on it.
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Then do it the other way round. The keys only need to be the same.
Bit of work to decrypt all the HDR stuff before changing it of course :whistling:

Or will that work? ... 🤔
 
MikeSh said:
Or will that work? ... 🤔
Click to expand...
It could... but you'll still need CF on the HD-FOX to create a pseudo-USB share of the HDR-FOX. In any case, changing the key on the HDR-FOX will also mean decrypting all existing recordings.

Owen Smith said:
Hmm, the HD Fox T2 advertising offered playback from HDR over network. To the average man in the street that means the user experience will be the same.
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Come now, surely you're not that naive. It does what they claim, anything else is over-expectation.

Owen Smith said:
I really don't want to use CF on HD Fox T2. It has no internal hard disc so CF is a pain in the neck on it.
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Nothing stopping you running CF from a UPD, 8GB is cheap these days but you need a metal-bodied one to cope with the heat dissipation. It will need formatting Ext2, the CF installation includes utilities to do that.
 
I know how to format a USB stick (or any drive) as Ext2, there is plenty of software around to do that.

And I see Black Hole is on form, insulting people while pretending to give advice. Please stop it, I am not an idiot.
 
Owen Smith said:
I know how to format a USB stick (or any drive) as Ext2, there is plenty of software around to do that.
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If you've not installed CF to HD-FOX before, you won't know you don't need to go to that trouble. The installation process includes the option to format a UPD appropriately.

Owen Smith said:
pretending to give advice
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Pretending? Show me where what I've posted was knowingly incorrect.

Owen Smith said:
Please stop it, I am not an idiot.
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Stop sounding like one then. As I have said before, this ain't the boy scouts.
 
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Back on topic,
Owen Smith said:
...The HD Fox T2 is for adding a DVB-T2 tuner to the upstairs TV, and for watching recordings from the HDR. But they've done a lot less of the latter because the remote playback experience is so poor. They expect it to look and behave the same as playing directly on the HDR, and it does not.
Click to expand...
To be fair, the same experience applies with DLNA playback on HDR from another one. It's not just a limitation of the HD.
...
Custom Firmware on the HD would ideally be avoided for this. It doesn't have any at present and it's a complication I don't want. It would have to be on a USB stick not a hard disc, and I understand that tends not to work very well as the Flash wears out. If the live playback buffer and ability to make recordings on the HD could be disabled that would be fine, no interest in using either of those.
Click to expand...
I have a satisfactory HD CF installation with one of these using a 64GB SD card with the timeshift buffer and recording (obviously not much) enabled. If needed (not for OP's application), you can also attach a WiFi dongle using one of the USB sockets, and still have two accessible sockets available for playing media from USB sticks or other devices. Apart from the limited storage space and the lack of a second tuner this makes a good HDR substitute, as used HDs can be picked up quite cheaply.

For use with unmodified CF <=3.13, the storage device has to appear as /dev/sda1. With the linked gadget, the SD card slot does this, so you can use an SD card or a MicroSD with an adapter.

In principle a USB stick or SD card will degrade with the time-shift buffer enabled, but my bet is that DVB-T2 will close or the 32-bit time_t will break first. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want time-shift if it could be enabled. Today I'd probably use 128GB as that seems to be the best price/GB, and also benefits the bedroom use case where you discover a show of interest that's too late to stay up and watch, but you don't want to go (or get your browser device out) and program the main PVR. (I suppose another solution would be a script for the HDR that monitors a shared dummy folder tree on the HD used to signal a show to be scheduled, similar to network-shares-automount).
 
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Off topic.

Black Hole, do you realise your attitude puts me off coming to hummy.tv? This is a shame given the excellent support available from other people and even yourself. If only you could learn to be more civil. I don't come here to be insulted.
 
Owen Smith said:
Black Hole, do you realise your attitude puts me off coming to hummy.tv? This is a shame given the excellent support available from other people and even yourself. If only you could learn to be more civil. I don't come here to be insulted.
Click to expand...
As a Moderator, this saddens me. We see complaints like yours on a regular basis. There is a very small minority of very knowledgeable users who feel they can make derogatory remarks about other users. I am open to suggestions about how we go forward. My previous appeals for more reasonable behaviour have been ignored.
 
MartinLiddle said:
As a Moderator, this saddens me. We see complaints like yours on a regular basis. There is a very small minority of very knowledgeable users who feel they can make derogatory remarks about other users. I am open to suggestions about how we go forward. My previous appeals for more reasonable behaviour have been ignored.
Click to expand...

I can handle most problems myself, so I don't post here often. I write software in C for a living, I could potentially contribute something to the custom firmware if only I didn't feel pushed away. I am an experienced IT professional who has written networking and broadcast media software for a living. I know what I'm doing in this area. Being insulted just drives me away to somewhere my knowledge and skills are appreciated, or at least not insulted.
 
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