HDR-Fox T2 Freeview box

[prpr]

How far are you from Bridgwater?

Far enough! You don't need to worry about the 'pong' any more anyway.
Further up in Mendip-land so J18-22 are probably better than J23/24 on the M5, but it's not a problem. Going anywhere is worth it these days.

...my Thomson TiVo in the recycle pile. You can have that too if you want.

No thanks.

 

[Owen Smith]

The EPG is stored on the hard disk but the settings and channel database are stored in flash.

The flash is partitioned with the firmware rootfs and kernel vmlinux written to separate partitions in flash. The variable data is written to another partition humaxtv_db which has been formatted using jffs2 (journalling flash file system). This file system is designed for flash devices and includes wear levelling etc.

The channel database and settings don't change that often. Having the EPG on hard disc makes sense given how often it changes and its size.

Use of jffs2 sounds like Humax didn't screw this up.

We should also consider where the custom firmware stores settings and dynamic data, eg. NTP sync times and various logs and performance data.

 

[prpr]

OK so that will gradually wear the flash.

It will, but...
I've looked at this before and as I wrote 18 months ago I cannot remember where/what. Maybe it was an article linked by af123, or maybe it wasn't. It's not worth worrying about for normal operation. A chip going faulty for another reason is a different matter.

 

[prpr]

I've been looking at alternatives for my ageing HDR but the one feature that I can't easily find elsewhere is the ability to decrypt and copy HD recordings onto other devices

If you've got a Raspberry Pi, you can get a DVB-T(2) hat for it from the A company for less than £7 (when I last looked). Broadcasts are not encrypted over the air and it just dumps the transport stream to disk in the same way (OK, it filters PIDs like they all seem to, but that doesn't matter for normal applications).

 

[Ian Manning]

If you've got a Raspberry Pi, you can get a DVB-T(2) hat for it from the A company for less than £7 (when I last looked). Broadcasts are not encrypted over the air and it just dumps the transport stream to disk in the same way (OK, it filters PIDs like they all seem to, but that doesn't matter for normal applications).

Interesting idea - thanks. I'd probably struggle to make a usable PVR out of a Raspberry Pi (particularly when the HDR has been my benchmark for a few years), but it sounds like an interesting side project if I ever get the urge to invest in a Pi!

 

[prpr]

I'd probably struggle to make a usable PVR out of a Raspberry Pi

It's as easy as installing Tvheadend from the standard repository.

 

[Black Hole]

But this is Flash not EPROM, and I've described the accelerated life testing that we do of final products. I cannot, on holiday away from work, remember if the datasheets say absolutely nothing or if they say assume it's infinite or 100 million reads or 20 years or whatever. What I know is no-one worries about it, because Flash has been in use for three decades and read/retention life has not become a problem.

I have to admire your dogged belief that Flash is never (in practical terms) going to forget... but that's all it is - belief. For a product lifetime of 2 or even 5 years I agree it's not a problem, but here we are, 10+ years on, with the population of HDRs showing varying unexplained faults. Who's prepared to stand up and say it's definitely not the Flash? Bear in mind there are also NV configuration switches embedded in the SoC.

 

[Ian Manning]

It's as easy as installing Tvheadend from the standard repository.

I guess I meant something which would be comparable to the HDR in terms of features. The Pi solution would be single-tuner, for example, which would fall short of my basic requirements :0(

 

[aw1]

Far enough! You don't need to worry about the 'pong' any more anyway.
Further up in Mendip-land so J18-22 are probably better than J23/24 on the M5, but it's not a problem. Going anywhere is worth it these days.

No thanks. (to TiVo offer).

Right. I'll contact you when I am next down with the HDRs.
Ahh, the cellophane works. I have tales to tell...

 

[Owen Smith]

I have to admire your dogged belief that Flash is never (in practical terms) going to forget... but that's all it is - belief. For a product lifetime of 2 or even 5 years I agree it's not a problem, but here we are, 10+ years on, with the population of HDRs showing varying unexplained faults. Who's prepared to stand up and say it's definitely not the Flash? Bear in mind there are also NV configuration switches embedded in the SoC.

Flash has been in use for about 30 years, with no sign of loss of data in retention. The oldest HDR Fox T2s are less than half that age, so I feel justified in saying Flash retention is unlikely to be a problem for the HDR Fox T2 yet.

What NV config is in the SoC and how is it stored? There are a number of options, including eFuse (literally metal or polysilicon fuses), OTP (various technologies hidden behind that name including un-erasable Flash and EPROM), FERAM (core store on a chip) and others. Until you know what type of NV config is in use you can't say anything about longevity.

 

[MymsMan]

The EPG is stored on the hard disk but the settings and channel database are stored in flash.

Of course I should have remembered that the EPG is in its own partition of the the hard disk!

 

[sceptic]

I was thinking that the HDHomerun might provide a solution to this. Presumably the Manhattan box doesn't?

I went the HDHomeRun route and have been using the DVROnTime software (see HERE) successfully over the last few months. Over the Xmas period I'm going to try finish off a script to better organise/name recordings and also to have a play with MCEBuddy to compress recordings and remove adverts etc.