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Useless Instruction manuals

S

slateman

New Member
Let me start by saying I never wanted digital TV, it was forced on me by the government and as far as I am concerned, the government should have paid all the costs. As they didn't, I had to buy a new TV, dish and Freesat+ receiver at vast expense. At the very least, I therefore expect the instruction manual to be clear, concise and accurate, and designed like all manuals should be, for complete idiots like wot I am!
I want to download from the media files, and onto a brand new 32gb memory stick, four video programmes for eventual burning to a DVD. According to the manual, I select media files, press OPT+ and from the pop-up, select file manager, and OK. To copy, select the file and press the GREEN button. Unfortunately, that's where the instructions end, because nothing happens and when the green button is highlighted, it says MOVE, not copy. When I insert the USB and select File Manager it gives me the option of HDD or USB1. I assume I should select USB1, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
Is anyone out there kind enough to give me a step by step idiot's guide on how to do this. I am getting extremely fed up.........
 
I had to buy a new TV, dish and Freesat+ receiver at vast expense
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Did HMG not give you the alternative of buying a cheapish FreeView STB to go with your existing TV rather than spending shedloads on a full blown High Definition satellite recorder setup ;) They did me, but I chose to go the HDR/freesat route and to heck with the expense.
I have tried to use the Humax so called file manager and had difficulties with it, but as far as I can remember (it was a long time ago) I just wanted to move stuff off the internal to free up space rather than copy.
 
I just tried it and it worked as advertised, although it is very slow.

1 Connected usb drive
2 Pressed Media button
3 Opt+, File Manager
4 The USB drive was already there on the right pane
5 Pressed right cursor button to move to right pane, highlighted USB drive, then pressed Select/OK to open it
6 Pressed left cursor button, then navigated to the file I wanted to copy and hit the Green copy button
7 Half an hour later, for a 30 minute programme, and not being able to do anything in the meantime, the file was copied, together with its sidecar files

If you have a PC, I would advise you to use the custom firmware and FTP (eg, Filezilla) which copies in the background. It's faster, and doesn't lock up your Hummy for hours at a time.

PS Trev, not everyone can receive Freeview. I would guess that the number who could get analogue exceeds the number who can get Freeview, but I may be wrong.

Also, not everyone can get Freesat. Hills, houses, trees, etc, tend to get in the way!

PPS slateman, did you format the USB drive correctly, so it was compatible with the Humax? Otherwise, I would guess it is step 5 above that you missed.
 
If ever I want to move/copy files (usually move), I use windows file manager with the Hummy as a mapped network drive, shuffle the files (with their sidecar files) and then use the fixfilepath jobbie from the CF to sort it all out. Works for me, and doesn't tie the Hummy up either! I suspect that the OP does not need to copy the sidecar files if he is just going to burn the .ts to DVD at a later date? Please feel free to point out the error of my ways.
 
Correct, to create DVD's all you need is the transport stream file (.ts). However using File Manager to copy to usb you don't have a choice, you get the .ts, .hmt and .nts files. (These are small anyway so it's not really an issue).
 
This may be a stupid question, but does this process decrypt the recording or were they not encrypted in the first place?
 
Black Hole said:
This may be a stupid question, but does this process decrypt the recording or were they not encrypted in the first place?
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The files are normally encrypted, and can not readily be decrypted. If the custom firmware is used, there is an add-on patch available, which will prevent the recordings from being encrypted in the first place.
 
Right, that's what I thought. So basically the OP is in for a disappointment even when he cracks his copy problem.
 
I see, a critical detail that was omitted. Well that's fine then, HiDef is not well suited to burning DVDs (StDef is much easier).
 
Thanks for the comments.
Trev - we were advised by an independent engineer that because of our location, Freeview would be about 50% efficient, hence the sat. route. Mike0001, thanks for the talk through, I'll try again, but where in the instruction manual does it say anything about formatting the memory stick. I never have to when I download pictures, documents or even my own videos. It's that sort of thing that so annoys me. If you write instructions, you should always assume that the reader knows absolutely nothing. Which in my case is about right, especially when people use jargon. No disrespect Trev, but I haven't a clue what a mapped network drive is, sidecar files (sounds like something attached to a motor bike?), fixfile path, .ts? Sorry, I said I was thick. The only good news is that at least what I want to copy is Standard Definition.
 
Re .TS and sidecar files. When the Hummy records a program, it not only records the video/audio, but a bunch of other stuff. The main video/audio is in a file with the extension .ts (Without meaning to be patronising, I am assuming that you know what a file extension is?) The other files it generates have the extensions *.hmt and *.nts. It also generates a folder with the same filename preceded with a period. In this folder is a load of *.tac files. All these extra files are necessary to play the video on the Hummy with all the pause/restart,bookmarks etc.
If you use the Hummy file manager, all these files are copied to the destination so they will play on the Hummy.

If you don't want to replay the stuff that you copy to the USB stick on the Hummy but burn it to a DVD, all you need to copy is the *.ts file, but to do this you need to be able to access the Hummy from your computer. You can then copy the *.ts file using the computer's file manager.
 
slateman said:
but where in the instruction manual does it say anything about formatting the memory stick.
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You probably don't need to, but if things are not working as they should this is an aspect to be looked at when problem solving. This presumes your "memory stick" is pre-formatted as FAT32 or Ext2/3. It is most likely FAT32 or NTFS.

As far as .ts (etc) is concerned, if you have your PC set to hide file extensions (the code after the dot in a file name which gives a clue what the file is for - eg .txt means a plain text file, .doc is a word processor document file, etc) then you never see the nuts and bolts and many things which happen will be a mystery to you. This is how opening a (say) video file results in the file being displayed in a video viewer rather than a word processor. It is also how some malware attacks trick you into executing a file you shouldn't - if you can't see the .exe (or such like) file extension, you might think you are opening a harmless image or something (for example, a file named photo.jpg.exe - without the extensions displayed all you see is "photo.jpg" which looks innocent, but if clicked will run as an executable and could install malware on your computer).

Without displaying file extensions, all you will see in the set of file saved by the Foxsat is a collection all with the same name and nothing to distinguish them except an icon to show what application will handle it. The .ts file contains the video data, and will be huge in comparison with the others, but if your video app does not support .ts it could show as unknown.
 
You don't need the .tac files, they are simply the small thumbnail images used for the chapter points. They aren't created when the recording is made, but overnight as part of the housekeeping routines. If you copy to usb in the standard way they are ignored. The chapters are still there without them but of course you don't see a small image indicating what point in playback is represented. Navigation data relies on the .nts file.
 
On your computer when you click on start/computer you open Windows File Explorer that shows you a list of drives the computer has access to identified by a letter followed by a Colon (eg C:). By opening more than 1 explorer window to different drives you can copy/move files between drives by simply dragging with a mouse. The Custom Firmware add on for the Foxsat has software that enables Windows Explorer to show the Foxsat hard drive as a normal device in Windows Explorer, provided both devices are connected to your home network. (The drive is mapped to Windows Explorer despite not being physically connected to the PC).

You can also copy content to and from a PC using FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
 
Yes, but if he can't get a USB drive to work, can he get the custom firmware onto his Hummy?
 
Greetings gentlemen. Sorry I've been away so not been able to act on some of the advice. No Trev, you're not being patronising, I haven't a clue what file extensions are (nor do I have any connection between my computer and the Hummy). Black Hole has tried to explain, but when I see jargon and acronyms, my mind simply clouds over. I don't think my brain is wired correctly for that sort of thing. Bring back the 19th century - I didn't much like the 20th and the current one's only getting worse! What's firmware? I know hardware and software, but firmware is a new one to me. Is it something I have to buy, or is it already there, if only I can find it. I really think I will give up, as life's too short, but thank you all for trying.
 
Although there are differences, (to point them out will unnecessarily complicate matters), you can consider firmware and software as the same thing. In the early days of Microsoft operating systems a typical computer file name might be readthis.txt or runthis.exe, where the 3 letters after the '.' are the file extension, it describes what kind of file it is, txt is a text (readable ) file and exe is an executable file, a file that runs a program
 
8.3 filenames/extensions goes back before MS-DOS (and IBM PC-DOS). CP/M on a Z80 used it in the mid-late seventies, as did TOPS-20 on a DEC-SYSTEM 20 around the same time.
There were probably others, but these were the ones I used. Eeeek!
 
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