- This topic has 10 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 1 month ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hi there I am hoping someone can help me out. I am trying to sort my parents with their Humax box. I have formatted to FAT32 an eternal HD that has a large capacity approx 300GB and a much smaller USB drive of 4GB.
Their Humax seems to read and play the mp3 file that I put on them but not the videos that were in mkv and mp4 containers. I do not understand why this is.
A friend of mine also has a Humax player, not the same model as theirs but when I have put similar files onto a USB for him, his player plays them without issue, other than files which are encoded with DTS audio which I understand as a lot players don not decode this.
Can anyone shed some light on what the issue may be ?
Many thanks in advance, Carl
The Foxsat-HDR cannot play back external video files without they be accompanied by the sidecar files that are generated internally by native recordings.
Raydon has a utility that can create these from suitable source files.
https://www.avforums.com/threads/av2hdr-v3-3-released.1916124/
Welcome to our forum.
Hi Graham, many thanks for replying. I need to understand your reply a bit better. Can you tell me what are sidecar files as I have never heard of these before ?
Thanks also for the link, I am going to check it now
It’s quite a while since I had a Foxsat-HDR but the two sidecar files contain information on the programme content, the .ts files location and the last viewed location. These files have the same name as the .ts files but with a different location.
UPDATE:
I have given up on this. Although the download link works (only when one has disabled adblocking software) the link just times out, so no download.
I think I will just dump the video files onto my mum’s laptop and connect that via hdmi. It is, in my mind a big fail on the part Humax that they have set up the Foxsat player like this, it is not user friendly especially as like I said my mates Humax box has no issues when it comes to playing these files without the need for yet more software in order to get them to play.
REPASSAC – 12 minutes ago »
It’s quite a while since I had a Foxsat-HDR but the two sidecar files contain information on the programme content, the .ts files location and the last viewed location. These files have the same name as the .ts files but with a different location.
Its a wierd thing to need when playing back files from a USB/external HD, I have never come across such a requirement before. Humax should have set it up, so when you are connecting external device it already has the required codecs to read and playback mkv, mp4 etc. Shame there isn’t a software update for this
Any support for playing back video is normally inbuilt into the PVR chipset and if mkv were supported it depend on the content(s).
The Foxsat-HDR is quite dated, native Windows support was only added in windows 10.
kharl – 38 minutes ago »
Hi Graham, many thanks for replying. I need to understand your reply a bit better. Can you tell me what are sidecar files as I have never heard of these before ?
Thanks also for the link, I am going to check it now
They are files with the same name as the main recording file but with a different file extension.
Namely xxxx.nts which contains navigation data that enables fast forward and reverse navigation
xxx.htm which contains information like the programme name synopses info and the path to the main .ts recording file
xxx.tac which is a small graphic used for chapter thumbnails. You don’t need to create these as the box does this automatically during overnight housekeeping.
Look at the image of Filezilla logged into my Foxsat-HDR. In the right hand pane you can see a Recording of Strictly It takes two complete with the .nts and .htm sidecar files.
[attachment=68975,1095]
kharl – 1 hour ago »
Its a wierd thing to need when playing back files from a USB/external HD, I have never come across such a requirement before.
I think everyone will agree with you and that probably includes Humax because none of the boxes designed after the FOXSAT require sidecar files although there are some benefits to having them. It is now almost ten years since the FOXSAT HDR was launched so at that time it was ahead of the game; time moves on and now this feature looks a bit odd.
kharl – 2 hours ago »
REPASSAC – 12 minutes ago »
It’s quite a while since I had a Foxsat-HDR but the two sidecar files contain information on the programme content, the .ts files location and the last viewed location. These files have the same name as the .ts files but with a different location.
Its a wierd thing to need when playing back files from a USB/external HD, I have never come across such a requirement before. Humax should have set it up, so when you are connecting external device it already has the required codecs to read and playback mkv, mp4 etc. Shame there isn’t a software update for this
The excellent HDR-FOX-T2 uses similar sidecar support files. This newer box will play back files without sidecar files, but adding them using the free software adds all the extra replay and rewind options like fast forward ad skipping etc you get with the native recordings so it’s worth creating them.
Creating them on a drive attached to a PC allows the recordings to be directly played on a Foxsat (say a NAS drive) using the custom firmware available for this box.
Kharl should consider the up to date Blue-ray and the older DVD-Video formats. Pretty well any media playing software can play back the Mpeg2 compressed contained in the sidecar VOB files specified in the DVD-Video file and folder structure and the H264/AVC files used on a blu-ray disc.
The navigation and extras required like chapters alternate audio options require the use of other files just like the original Foxsat-HDR. If anything the Foxsat was ahead of it’s time.
https://www.ketos.eu/fs/e1b9977d-4b13-11e5-ad75-85850ba828cf-homenet-general-info-eng-dvd-video.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Directory_and_file_structure
There is a lot more involved in just replaying a compressed video file than just replaying the content.
A more advanced player will allow complete playback of the content with all the original menus and options intact. A common format for these image files is a .iso file.
Windows 10 has built in capability to mount such files (including Blu-ray without any optical drive connected to a PC).
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/mount-an-iso-image-in-windows-vista/
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.