Repurposing HDR-T2

wintegs

New Member
Hi all,

I have been using my HDR for 10 years without fault, its been fantastic, however, as times change and streaming becomes more commonplace in the house, its being used less and less.

I'm getting a new TV next week, Panasonic TX55HZ1500b which is going on the wall and so the T2 needs to find a new home that's not in the lounge.

There are loads of films etc on their mainly for the kids that do get used so I was planning to move them to a portable hard drive that could sit behind the TV.
I read about decrypting and converting the files to another file type which all seems relatively straight forward if time consuming.

Then I wondered if there is an easier way, if I relocate the T2 but leave it connected to the router would I be able 'see' the files from the TV (connected to the network) and play them?
I assume I would have to remove the encryption from the HD files as they would be playing through the TV's media app?

Thanks in advance.
 
I assume I would have to remove the encryption from the HD files as they would be playing through the TV's media app?
Yes using the auto-unprotect package in the custom firmware,
The TV's media app would use dlna so decryption would not be required however not all media players can cope with ts files
 
Then I wondered if there is an easier way, if I relocate the T2 but leave it connected to the router would I be able 'see' the files from the TV (connected to the network) and play them?
There's nothing to stop you trying it, but as was pointed out to me recently the reason a lot of media players built into smart TVs won't play the recordings served by the HDR-FOX DLNA server is because Humax chose to use M2TS instead of the broadcast TS format (and then confuse matters further by calling it .TS).

Also, your HDR-FOX has value to other people, if you really don't plan to use it any more (apart from as a file server), so it seems a shame to let it just gather dust.

I read about decrypting and converting the files to another file type which all seems relatively straight forward if time consuming.
It's not at all time consuming - you don't have to sit there watching it. Just kick it off and let it get on with it.

What happens next depends whether you have a substantial number of HiDef recordings, or whether they are all StDef. StDef can be quickly bulk-converted to .MPG on-box, which will be much easier to cope with than the M2TS. (The MPG is a duplicate rather than a replacement, so you have to watch for the HDD filling up.)

HiDef can't be converted to MPG, because the AVC/AAC codecs are not compatible, but they are straighforward to convert to MP4 on a PC.

Either way, it is easy enough to get all your recordings into .MPG or .MP4 and onto a cheap portable USB HDD to plug into a USB port on your telly, and then flog off the HDR-FOX.

Even if you kept the HDR-FOX as a file server, and even if you could persuade the TV to play recordings from it, the playback would not be as satisfying as the playback controls available on the HDR-FOX.
 
There's nothing to stop you trying it, but as was pointed out to me recently the reason a lot of media players built into smart TVs won't play the recordings served by the HDR-FOX DLNA server is because Humax chose to use M2TS instead of the broadcast TS format (and then confuse matters further by calling it .TS).
....
The situation regarding smart TVs was summarised here but time has passed and I believe that stripts may have been enhanced since then (-F option, see Wiki).
 
on my last two Panasonics you need to format a portable drive using the tv os and anything that's recorded on this drive wont play on anything other than the tv it was recorded on, just check beforehand
 
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