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I’ll continue my thread here as the previous one seems to have been hijacked and is now too confusing.
Alan White – 7 hours ago »
Thanks for the explanation. Unfortunately I can’t get past step 2. When I insert the stick and bring the box out of standby with the button pressed nothing happens except that BBC1 flashes up and then the box goes back into standby.
I note the suggestion to use a low-capacity USB stick (and Humax’s recommendation to use one under 1Gb in size – heaven knows what century they’re in). Perhaps that’s the problem though why the size should matter I don’t know. The only USB stick I have is 32Gb. I think my son has an ancient 1Gb stick: I’ll ask him when he comes in and try again with that.
I tried again with my son’s 2Gb stick and that worked fine. Obviously I need to buy a smaller USB stick – if they’re still available!
Now I can see the EPG, schedule, recordings, etc which is good but what next? I guess I need to install some applications but which?
You need to read the documentation but the amswer does depend on what you want to achieve and what other equipment you have.
REPASSAC – 1 hour ago »
You need to read the documentation
Oh I have, but I understand very little of it: it’s all very technical and seems to be aimed at people who already know what’s involved and therefore don’t actually need the documentation
.It’s difficult to say what I want to achieve because that will depend on what the software is capable of. I think the thing I’m most missing is to play the recordings on a PC elsewhere on the network. I can see the list or recordings but there doesn’t seem to be an option to play them?
You can make a network share abailable on the Foxsat using samba so that you PC can see the recordings on the Foxsat’s disk. Windows Media player or the VLC player can then play them (SD recordings, not most HD recodings).
If you install VLC on your PC it will, by default, install an activex control which will enable SD recordings to be played in internet explorer. (You need to click on a SD recording)
The documentation does assume basic PC skills and also some searching for terms, for example describing what ftp does is better left to wikipedia. There is an assumtion if, for example, you do not know what DLNA is there is a good change you do not need it.
I think I have this now. I found mention of a VLC player plug in which would add a play button. I installed that and the play button appeared but files still wouldn’t play, complaining about a missing plugin but then not finding it.
Further digging found that I needed some more software – VLC media player. I installed that and can now play recordings on the Foxsat on my PC
.Surely things aren’t intended to be this difficult?
I have two remaining questions:
1. Is it possible to see the recordings as a list in a similar way as it appears on the Foxsat with date/time/length etc, rather than as a raw filename? And in the same order? (I don’t actually like the Foxsat’s reverse sort but I do like consistency.)
2. While playing a recording the progress bar is blank. Is that a known problem?
The VLC player is one of several methods of doing the same thing.
1. Yes via the web interface – You may have to click on the title to see more details. As to sort order – the Web interface does not know what setting you have set to display the items – I use date order (opt+, I seem to remember, is the way to change the Foxsat settings).
2. Yes the VLC activx control does not seeem to support it. The VLC main program does support it and much more when playing from a network share.
Thanks for the reply.
Unfortunately the Foxsat sort order doesn’t have date/time ascending as an option. That seems to me to be the most logical sort because I’ll want to watch programmes in the order they were recorded. The web interface is much better because the recordings are sorted in date/time ascending.
Yes, the blank progress bar seems to be a bug in the plugin. As you say, it works fine if I download the file and play it in VLC itself.
Pressing the ‘List’ button changes the sort order on the HDR. I seem to remember that date/time is one of the options.
dino – 24 minutes ago »
Pressing the ‘List’ button changes the sort order on the HDR. I seem to remember that date/time is one of the options.
Indeed it is. But (unlike on the 9300) there’s no asc/desc option. If you sort by alpha then it’s sorted asc, which makes sense; but if you sort by date/time it’s sorted desc, which doesn’t
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I thought that that there was a way it could be reversed – will check later. Think pressing something flipped it ascending / decending.
Alan White – 4 days ago »
I tried again with my son’s 2Gb stick and that worked fine. Obviously I need to buy a smaller USB stick – if they’re still available!
I’ve now purchased a 2Gb stick and I’d like to confirm that it works (before my son takes the stick I know works to uni).
What’s the best way of doing this? Should I use the new stick to reinstall the custom firmware? Or to reinstall the Humax firmware?
What will happen to the customisations I’ve made to the custom firmware? Is there a way of preserving those or do I have to repeat them?
No point in istalling the Humax firmware, custom firmware 4.0.8 will also install the latest Humax firmware. Your customisations should be intact, mine were when I upgraded 4.0.7 to 4.0.8
Well, that was a puzzling hour or so
:The Foxsat didn’t recognise the new 2Gb stick. The stick is a SanDisk and was already formatted as FAT32 and with SanDisk’s software on it. I copied the software to my PC and reformatted the stick as FAT (because my son’s stick, which had worked to install the custom firmware, was FAT). The Foxsat now recognised the stick and happily re-installed the custom firmware (maintaining all my customisations).
I then reformatted as FAT32 and once again the Foxsat happily re-installed the custom firmware. I now suspected that the Foxsat didn’t like there being other files on the stick so I copied SanDisk’s files back and yet again the Foxsat happily re-installed the custom firmware.
So, as far as files are concerned, the stick is the same as it was when I took it out of the packaging. My conclusion – which it’s too late to prove – is that there was something on the pre-formatted stick which the Foxsat didn’t like.
As an experiment, I tried again with the 32Gb stick I’d first tried and which hadn’t worked. I reformatted it (as FAT32, which it already was) but the Foxsat still didn’t recognise it.
I now see why there’s so much discussion about sticks not working. I conclude that the Foxsat doesn’t like large sticks (which, these days, is most of them) and it’s fussy about some aspects of the formatting. I think I prefer the serial method used by the 9300
I now re-format a stick every time before copying a single .hdf file to it, having had similar experiences. This seems to work everytime with both a HD FOX T2 and a Foxsat-HDR
I think it is a question of what the other files on the stick are there for. I have one stick which presents itself to a windows system as 2 ‘drives’ – that one won’t work.
Several others I have used with all sorts of files and folders give no such trouble – I therefore suspect any ‘security’ or added features software on a stick as likely to give trouble.
Derek
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