Is it possible to disable time shifting?

[dma]

Hi,

I was just wondering if it was possible to disable time shifting on the customized firmware? I couldn't find anything in the official firmware on it. By this I mean the fact that the Humax unit writes the current channel to disk on the off-chance that you want to pause live TV.

On my old Toppy 5800 I disabled this feature and managed to extend the lifetime of the hard disk significantly.

I don't use this feature at all and would prefer my hard disk to have a longer life.

 

[af123]

Yes, you can run the disable_tsr diagnostic from the web server diagnostics page. You need to type the name into the box.
To restore TSR, use enable_tsr.

 

[Black Hole]

I think you have to be tuned to a non-video channel when you do that (eg 200).

 

[dma]

Thanks guys, this worked perfectly. For anyone else who's interested...

The unit was constantly writing to this area (files updated very recently)...

humax# pwd
/mnt/hd2/Tsr
 
humax# date
Mon May 13 22:58:18 BST 2013
 
humax# ls -lrt
-rw-r--r--    1 root    root        13184 May 13 22:56 0.hmt
-rw-r--r--    1 root    root    10795180032 May 13 22:58 0.ts
-rw-r--r--    1 root    root      24306720 May 13 22:58 0.nts

Then I switched to a non-video channel (BBC Red Button, channel 200 as suggested) and it stopped writing to these files...

humax# date
Mon May 13 23:00:02 BST 2013
 
humax# ls -lrt
-rw-r--r--    1 root    root    10795180032 May 13 22:59 0.ts
-rw-r--r--    1 root    root      24306720 May 13 22:59 0.nts

In the web GUI I ran disable_tsr...

>>> Beginning diagnostic disable_tsr
Running: disable_tsr
Removing TSR data file...
Removing TSR index file...
Removing TSR meta file...
 
>>> Ending diagnostic disable_tsr

...and it looks like it linked those files to /dev/null device...

humax# ls -lrt
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root    root            9 May 13 23:01 0.ts -> /dev/null
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root    root            9 May 13 23:01 0.nts -> /dev/null

So no more constant writing to the disk. Yet another reason why the custom firmware is essential for me!

 

[Deleted member 473]

Douglas Adams on Time Shifting:

"news broke that not only had the great Cathedral of Chalesm been pulled down in order to build a new ion refinery, but that the construction of the refinery had taken so long, and had had to extend so far back into the past in order to allow ion production to start on time, that the Cathedral of Chalesm had now never been built in the first place. Picture postcards of the cathedral suddenly became immensely valuable.

"So a lot of history is now gone forever. The Campaign for Real Timers claim that just as easy travel eroded the differences between one country and another, and between one world and another, so time travel is now eroding the differences between one age and another. "The past," they say, "is now truly like a foreign country. They do things exactly the same there.""

 

[digitalspace]

When you say you extended the hard drive time considerably, what are we talking here? How long (on average)would be expect a time-shift enabled unit to last, I'm wondering if this is something I shoulddisable versus the convenience of having time shift available to me.

 

[Ezra Pound]

There are two parameters to conciser here ID5 (Start Stop Count) and ID9(Power On Hours) have a look in the Web-If >> Diagnostics >> Hard Disk Info. >> Attributes . It is possible that disabling the time-shift buffer could increase the Start Stop count, however it would reduce the Power On Hours figure, it worth barring in mind that hard disk is good for tens of thousands of hours

 

[xyz321]

It is possible that disabling the time-shift buffer could increase the Start Stop count, however it would reduce the Power On Hours figure, it worth barring in mind that hard disk is good for tens of thousands of hours

Only if the HDD spin down timeout was set or it was forced to spin down.

 

[prpr]

Fix for disable_tsr on HD-FOX:

--- disable_tsr~
+++ disable_tsr
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 #!/bin/sh
 
 dir=/mnt/hd2/Tsr
+[ `cat /etc/model` == 'HD' ] && dir=/media/drive1/.tsr
 
 if [ -d $dir ]; then
        echo "Removing TSR data file..."

Same fix needed for enable_tsr.

 

[af123]

Done, thanks - also tsr/enable and tsr/disable which are the preferred forms.. linked together now anyway.
Also tsr/reset