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Hi,
I’ve just jacking in my Sky World MultiRoom HD subscription (which I hardly ever get to watch) and am looking to use the money more constructively. I read your blog post about the HD-Fox and I’ve also read about similar functionality across the FreeSat equivalents.
I am looking to have a HDR in my main viewing room and then 1 or two HD boxes distributed through the house.
I have a few of questions:
1:
It appears the media sharing functionality your describe in your blog post between the FreeView boxes is native, however, if I was to go the FreeSat route, this is achieved only by custom firmware (i.e. a hack). Is this correct?
2.
If that is the case, how solid is the performance of the custom firmware? If I have free will should I opt for FreeView or FreeSat?
3.
Could I mix them? Eg can I have FreeSat downstairs where there is satellite feeds and then use a FreeView HD-Fox upstairs and will that still pull content from the FreeSat Foxsat-HDR downstairs?
4.
Can all of these boxes (Foxsat-HD, Foxsat-HDR, HD-Fox, HDR-Fox-T2) all access media from a NAS elsewhere on the network?
5.
Can they all access iPlayer and ITVPlayer successfully?
I realise if I hunted hard enough I would probably find most of the answers to to these questions (and I have a fair idea what they are) but I would really appreciate the forum’s view and any suggestions you could make.
Thanks in advance,
Yorkshireboy.
Welcome to the forums!
1. Yes (but read on…)
2. I’ve only just installed the latest custom firmware so not had a chance to really test it. I’ve recently had issues making one-off recordings (these were failing after the custom firmware install for some reason) but a channel rescan fixed this. I had the v3 of the custom firmware installed a while back and had Twonky Media server running as the DLNA server and that worked OK. Not sure if this is still available with v4, which comes with MediaTomb as the DLNA server (but I’ve not tried this yet).
Between Freeview and Freesat Humax boxes, I would go for the Freeview as the hardware is newer and the DNLA facilities are already on board (and if more are needed then there’s custom firmware for these boxes too). The only reason for going Freesat is to get non-regional programming (for me English football, as I live in Scotland, and on Freeview, I can only pick up Scottish football.)
3. Yes, I think you can – I need to test. But you won’t be able to distribute HD recordings off the FOXSAT-HDR (I think).
4. Yes, for the HD/HDR-FOX T2. I would assume so with the FOXSAT-HDR, but this needs testing. The FOXSAT-HD is a definite no, as there is no custom firmware for this box at all.
5. Yes (but need to confirm on the FOXSAT-HD).
More answers as I carry on doing some testing and confirmations…
son_t – 29 minutes ago »
5. Yes (but need to confirm on the FOXSAT-HD).
I don’t think that is correct for the Freeview boxes where currently only BBC iPlayer is available.
son_t – 5 minutes ago »
Isn’t ITV player available via the TV Portal?
Not on the Freeview boxes so far as I am aware.
I think it might, but I will confirm…
EDIT: Just had this confirmed, no ITV player yet on Freeview’s Humax TV Portal… but I guess it will come… (thought it was added when Picasa, Twitter and Facebook got added…)
It’s crap anyway
I couldn’t find any FA Cup highlights of the Saturday matches on Sunday at all 
Oh yeah, the other thing to confirm is ITV player is on the FOXSAT-HD.
So ITV player is on the Freesat platform but not on the Freeview platform… Having just thought about it; I know SkyPlayer has been promised but has ITV player ever been promised on the Freeview platforms..?
son_t – 47 minutes ago »
has ITV player ever been promised on the Freeview platforms..?
Not so far as I am aware.
son_t – 2 hours ago »
Welcome to the forums!
…
Between Freeview and Freesat Humax boxes, I would go for the Freeview as the hardware is newer and the DNLA facilities are already on board.
That was generally the view I had arrived at. I think I will keep my Sky as FreeSat to be able to pick up any additional / regional stuff I want to watch live, but use FreeView to grab all the content (predominantly soaps for The Wife) and pull stuff from the NAS.
Is their a custom firmware plug-in to view DVDs natively from ISO, or would they have to be ripped to mkv / mp4 etc…
This is a great help, many thanks.
One other question I forgot:
Is it easy to upgrade the HD in the HDR (be it the FreeSat or FreeView version)?
Cheers,
Yorkshireboy
Yes, the HDR-FOX T2 can format a replacement HDD 1TB or under – just swap the old with the new drive and boot it up and get the HDR to format.
Otherwise, for larger HDDs you need to lay out the filesystem on it first. Follow these instructions for the HDR-FOX T2: http://myhumax.org/blog/?p=22
I’ve just installed MediaTomb on the FOXSAT-HDR (with raydon’s media bundle) and this seems to be able to serve SD recordings
This media server can be seen by XBMC and the HD/R-FOX T2
I’ve also investigated media streaming to the XBOX 360 – and unfortunately, it can’t see either the HDR-FOX T2 DLNA server nor MediaTomb on the FOXSAT-HDR. Maybe some can confirm that this is the case (and not that I need to do something extra on the XBOX.)
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