MagicTV 3700TD - Opinions

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37 posts

Geek

#524655 22-Sep-2011 15:50

mithiedog: Just been advised that the first firmware upgrade for 3700 is now available. (5.03NZ) Will install and report back on any performance improvements.

Yes please - I'll be very interested to know what improvements they have included.

mentalinc

3404 posts

Uber Geek
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Trusted

#524729 22-Sep-2011 19:01

Jimmy22: Oh Crazy Stu , where for art thou Crazy Stu ....
http://crazystu.com.au/Magic_TV_MTV4000PVR_1TB_Dual_HD_PVR_MHEG_5_MPEG_2_4_H_264_HDMI_Optional_Wireless_N_Adaptor-p-324721.html

$373.00 N Z D available now in Aus , same Manufacturer , same Hardware and no hobbled software .... the 4000 evidently can run 3700 software BTW. ill keep an eye on the price of milk in NZ in the mean time ;)

I thought Aus used different stepping 8Mhz instead of the 7.5MhZ we use? Doesn't this mean it wont work?

CPU: AMD 5900x | RAM: GSKILL Trident Z Neo RGB F4-3600C16D-32GTZNC-32-GB | MB: Asus X570-E | GFX: EVGA FTW3 Ultra RTX 3080Ti| Monitor: LG 27GL850-B 2560x1440

Quic: https://account.quic.nz/refer/473833 R473833EQKIBX

GraemeD

11 posts

Geek

#524741 22-Sep-2011 19:23

I have bought the MTV4000 from CrazyStu and it works fine except no freeview EPG, no NZ time zones. If someone can work out how to get the NZ software to work on the MTV4000 this would be fantastic

Jimmy22

377 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 40

#524743 22-Sep-2011 19:26

Some one has already imported onepost is in the 3600 thread about page 60.... It already works ok ish and now the 3700firmware is out it could be perfectly ok we shall see. still huge price differences huh ? Same box theory is looking good :-)

GraemeD

11 posts

Geek

#524770 22-Sep-2011 20:49

I have the MTV4000 from Aus and have reflashed this with the MTV3700 AU firmware but it is not letting me load the NZ firmware. Really annoying (but the risk you take with trying to save some $ I suppose).

If anyone has more success than me please let me know

Jimmy22

377 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 40

#524771 22-Sep-2011 20:51

Wellbest shot from my perspectivte is to do the rescue procedureand use the nz 3700 firmware.but you need to know you have the original 4000 firmware on handto recover it if its a failure. a bit risky at best no one has ever done this before.. totally your risk and kiwis reward. think carefully about it. but there is a credible option. rescue procedure is in trouble shooting section of the manual hope it helps....:-)

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Jimmy22

377 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 40

#524772 22-Sep-2011 20:52

Posts crossed over

GraemeD

11 posts

Geek

#524777 22-Sep-2011 21:03

There is no rescue procedure documented in the MTV4000 manual. Downloading the MTV3700 / MTV3600 manuals but for whatever reason they are taking a long time.

Willing to give it a go and to keep playing with this until I can get this right

nigelb999

37 posts

Geek

#524968 23-Sep-2011 11:39

Anyone tried the new firmware (5.03NZ) for the 3700? How does it look? Any noticeable improvements? Can't wait to hear back from anyone who's install it.

I'm really hoping it makes improvements to...

(1) smoother fast-forwarding and rewinding frame motion
(2) removes the occasional unanticipated popup of subtitles suddenly appearing on the TVNZ channels
(3) removes the unnecessary 'NZST' (NZ Standard Time) text appearing alongside each date/time display on the Recorded Programmes and Programme Info screens - NZ only has one time zone anyway! It just adds clutter to the time display (IMO).

mentalinc

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Trusted

#525232 24-Sep-2011 08:30

The time thing might be there due to daylight savings NZDT. It might show up in the few days/weeks before the change?

CPU: AMD 5900x | RAM: GSKILL Trident Z Neo RGB F4-3600C16D-32GTZNC-32-GB | MB: Asus X570-E | GFX: EVGA FTW3 Ultra RTX 3080Ti| Monitor: LG 27GL850-B 2560x1440

Quic: https://account.quic.nz/refer/473833 R473833EQKIBX

CraigHumphrey

61 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 22

#525256 24-Sep-2011 10:37

OK, so I spied JB HiFi's $577 deal on the MTV3700TD and decided this was finally the tipping point to buying a FreeView PVR.

Note: this is my first PVR, though I have played with Win7 MediaCenter, but found my signal strength just isn't enough for the AverMedia USB tuner I have (at some point I'm going to wire in a splitter/amplifier on the aerial cable...)

When I first got it (Friday, that's yesterday) it had the 5.02NZ firmware and almost immediately exhibited the "subtitles turn up on TVNZ channels" issue. Note: you CAN actually turn them back off with the subtitles button, but you have to "turn them on" first and the button is slow to react.

I set it up to record a few things on series link (RWC2011 on MaoriTV and 7days on TV3) and immediately noticed that it thought it was going to record 7days on TV3+1.

Later in the evening I flashed the firmware up to 5.03NZ. This was after 7days should have recorded (twice). I checked back in the recording and it had only done it once, YAY!

I've got it set to record 2mins pre and 10mins post, which might be why it failed to record the second of two consecutive RWC2011 programs on MaoriTV last night, but I might also have missread the total length of the two programs... More testing required, fortunately there's lots more rugby :)

I had also set it to series record Gynx (Computer/Console gaming show on 7/U), but while I was messing around noticed that it had set itself to record something like "the holiday travelers" show, which I promptly cancelled. And it popped up to say that it was no longer going to record Gynx... I haven't checked yet, but I wonder if this means that Gynx was being replaced by some holiday program in the future, or just that the EPG info had gotten messed up somewhere...

Speaking of the EPG, the NZST still appears, but only when you use the info button on a given channel/program, so not within the general EPG (given I almost went straight to 5.03NZ, I'm not sure if this has changed). Otherwise the EPG looks and behaves almost identiacally to my 3rd gen Samsung LED.

Speaking of TV, I set the remote to work with Samsung TVs, which works great for power and volume, but the source switching isn't the greatest, as my Samsung doesn't timeout the displaying of the source, so you still need to go back to the Samsung remote to exit the source menu. It's also a shame that the mute doesn't use the TV's mute (though I guess if you're going through a HiFi system, you probably don't want that).

Stuttering on FF and RW. Haven't played with rewind yet. The FF works very similarly to many popular software media players, with 1.5x and 2x working fairly well (with audio), but any faster is stuttery. By the looks of it, it's basically not buffering, but using a process I would call "skip and sample", where it skips ahead in the media file (based on speed of FF) perhaps to the nearest B frame (or what ever the equivalent is) and samples enough data to render a couple of frames before skipping off to the next point.
You often see this in software based media players and I think it's simply because modern video codecs require decoding of every single frame (I frames?) between key frames (B frames?) to ensure that the picture doesn't become garbled. Given that HD video streams require a reasonable amount of grunt to decode, you're talking about some serious compute power by the time you're wanting to FF at 16x, to say nothing of potential disk read bandwidth (and you could be recording two channels as well...).

But that's just my take on it. I find the stutter acceptable.

Some quirks:

I've got mine set to put the HD to sleep and I noticed today that while it was waiting for the HD to spin up, I wasn't getting any audio (over HDMI), though video was OK.

My signal strength is fairly poor (gotta put that amp in!) and signal strength is often between 55 and 65%, while quality is around 95%+. Which means I do get the odd picture black-out. But only black-outs, not pixelation.

I've got the HDMI output set to 1080p 50Hz, which my Samsung seems fairly happy with, but it does take in the order of 5-10 seconds for my TV to "find" the signal. I've got HDMI set to "fast" start, whatever that really means...

On my Samsung TV, when you display the info for the current program, it has a nice little bar showing how far through the current program is, this is missing on the 3700. Given how busy the program info dialog is on the 3700 (no thanks to NZST) this is somewhat annoying.

Otherwise so far so good. I haven't tried moving a recording on to USB yet, which I'd like to do to check out the format/encryption. (I believe the encryption is used on both USB and internal HD)

I'll post an update after a few weeks and see if I'm still enjoying it :)

Later'ish
Craig

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SubmarinerDTV

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#525378 24-Sep-2011 17:33

Craig, I have a Samsung 40C650 TV with MagicTV 4000 (Australian User) and you can force the TV out of Source Switching by pressing a volume button. Not a pretty way of doing it, but it saves reaching for a second remote ;)

Your audio problem could be caused by setting HDMI Startup Mode = Fast. Try changing it to HDMI Startup Mode = Normal. This fix has helped some users in Australia.

GraemeD

11 posts

Geek

#525382 24-Sep-2011 17:52

Still trying to get the NZ firmware on an AU box. The rescue procedure for the 3600 takes you to a rescue setting on the 3700/4000 but it does not pick up the NZ ver of the firmware, tried renaming the NZ firmware to the same name as the AU version but this still does not work.

CraigHumphrey

61 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 22

#525556 25-Sep-2011 14:13

SubmarinerDTV: Craig, I have a Samsung 40C650 TV with MagicTV 4000 (Australian User) and you can force the TV out of Source Switching by pressing a volume button. Not a pretty way of doing it, but it saves reaching for a second remote ;)

Yeah, I found that out eventually. Slightly lame, but at least it works.

Your audio problem could be caused by setting HDMI Startup Mode = Fast. Try changing it to HDMI Startup Mode = Normal. This fix has helped some users in Australia.

Cool, I'll give that a try.

I've also switched the HDMI from 1080p to 1080i and that seems to have stopped the screen blanking issue, which I was blaming on signal strength... I guess either my Samsung TV can't handle 1080p very well, or the MTV3700 doesn't.

BTW has anyone cracked open one of these boxes? I'd love to see what's inside...

Oh and seeing the 3600 threads about using WiFi dongles (RT2870 based), I tried my Linksys WUSB54GC, but it didn't work, even though (as far as I can tell) it's RT2870 based. Guess it's time to extend my CAT5E to the lounge :)

Later'ish
Craig

Jimmy22

377 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 40

#525705 26-Sep-2011 10:09

http://www.magictv.co.nz/downloads/MTV3700TD-NZ_Owners%20Guide.pdf has the manual for MTV3700 ,

BUT i would consult this users manual .....

http://www.freeviewshop.co.nz/magic-mtv3700td-myfreeview-terrestrial-recorder-p-591.html

copy the MTV3700 firmware update listed   below to the root directory of a usb memory stick (hint: it would pay to unzip it first)

http://www.magictv.co.nz/support.html

insert the usb stick in to the magictv with it switched off

power up the magic and keep pressing the pause button on the remote, it should go into rescue mode if not try again.

in rescue mode the magictv will pull down any software designed for it even if it is a previous firmware, which comes in handy.

Make sure you save and file previous firmware over time so if they try to recode the box to lock out hacks you can alway revert to the last known good/ worthwhile firmware .

Rock and roll....

if you are inclined to hack the box to get normal ffd and rewind then see how it was done on the MTV3600 thread and google 2lostkiwis...

hope that helps someone out there...

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