Excellent news. Can't for the life of me get it to upgrade via USB. Anyone any ideas. Got it in the root directory of the USB pen. The system info menu screens states that it recognises the USB pen. Grrrr.....
Py99ajh: Excellent news. Can't for the life of me get it to upgrade via USB. Anyone any ideas. Got it in the root directory of the USB pen. The system info menu screens states that it recognises the USB pen. Grrrr.....
Hi Py99ajh. All I can think of is that it needs to be unzipped and all the contents put in the root of your drive and that the drive is probably best formatted FAT32. It's also probably best that it's freshly formatted and that nothing else is on there. Good luck! Once, none of that worked for me, so I perfomed the rescue procedure outlined in the last couple of pages of the manual. That worked fine.
I've only had my unit for 3 days, and the general impression is good. However, I bought it because I read in the online version of the manual that you can edit and SAVE TO USB DEVICE. Now this option does not exist in the current firmware, so I can not save shows for later viewing, give to friends who missed the episode etc. The reason I bought the Magic was because my DVD/HDD recorder had died, and I thought I would "upgrade" to a freeview device. Well, it turns out that that "upgrade" has cost me 799 and does not deliver on the functionality of a 299 DVD/HDD recorder. The WAF in the household has plummeted!!!! I tried to install the Hong Kong firmware (which does allow saving to USB), but there must be a hardware detection routine, because it refused to load. Oh well, back down the road to Noel Leeming for a DVD recorder I suppose. Anyone want to buy a (just) used MagicTV??
Save to USB? What are you after this for/How often will you actually do this?
You won't get that functionality on any 'freeview approved' (read limited) device. And you won't get the full EPG on any non 'freeview approved' device on DVB-T
I was under the impression that TIVO would allow exporting?
Option B is freeview satellite service which can work with non freeview approved boxes, or does that Hyundai box allow you to use the recordings you make to external hard drive off the DVB-T service?
Option C is take the plunge and build your own HTPC with zero restrictions (but some extra effort to get a full EPG)
Must admit I got pissed off when I bought my JC Matthew box, expecting to be able to hook up the network port with my PC network, or offload movies to USB to share with friends. Apparently not, I was told by the supplier that the network port is purely their for the manufacturer to be able to access the box with their specialist software, and it serves absolutely no use for the purchaser. So why have it showing? My only reasoning for having this external and portrayed on the pictures is to lure the consumer into buying the product thinking they are getting this functionality. Sure if they read all the literature first they would know they were not getting this, but many consumers don't read first. Let the buyer beware! Having said all that, the number of times I've actually handed friends recorded stuff from my old DVD recorder can be counted on one hand, so realistically I am not going to miss the feature. I do however think FreeView are going over the top by restricting this, I mean you can download the movies from the net if you are that keen on pirating. My suggestion is to live with it for a while, and if you are going to go back to DVD recorder, wait until the blue ray recorders come down in price a bit.
I wanted to move to USB so I could then cut to DVD to for family members who missed the original airing because of work committments. The original Magic manual said you could do this, which is what P%!%!$# in the first place. I have a MCE machine but it has even less WAF cos it dies every couple of days (not the box/windows, just MCE). It proceeds to lose the EPG and all scheduled recordings at the same time. Total waste of time and money. I'm in the process of moving all the media files off that box so I can rebuild it as a media portal TV server. I won't be watching TV using it, just "space/time shifting" content. There are also a lot of tools available for procesing TS files, whereas the choice for mce wtv files is limited. I own videoredo which can do most of it, but it still barfs most of the time on TV3 (maybe its the shows??). When videoredo can't process it, I try windows live movie maker as a last resort. It can read wtv and write mpg, but what takes videoredo about 7 minutes to process takes wlmm about 4 hours.
rosswakelin: I wanted to move to USB so I could then cut to DVD to for family members who missed the original airing because of work committments. The original Magic manual said you could do this, which is what P%!%!$# in the first place. I have a MCE machine but it has even less WAF cos it dies every couple of days (not the box/windows, just MCE). It proceeds to lose the EPG and all scheduled recordings at the same time. Total waste of time and money. I'm in the process of moving all the media files off that box so I can rebuild it as a media portal TV server. I won't be watching TV using it, just "space/time shifting" content. There are also a lot of tools available for procesing TS files, whereas the choice for mce wtv files is limited. I own videoredo which can do most of it, but it still barfs most of the time on TV3 (maybe its the shows??). When videoredo can't process it, I try windows live movie maker as a last resort. It can read wtv and write mpg, but what takes videoredo about 7 minutes to process takes wlmm about 4 hours.
This is exactly what the broadcasters don't want you doing, especially on HD movies. That's why no Freeview approved box will let you do it.
I don't recall seeing export to USB on any documentation post release. Which site did you get the manual on - Hong Kong or NZ? The NZ documentation certainly doesn't say you can do that. In the faqs it explicitly says you can't.
http://magictv.co.nz/support.html
As someone else has commented the choices you have in a DVB-T STB are no EPG or not being able to export.
Py99ajh: Excellent news. Can't for the life of me get it to upgrade via USB. Anyone any ideas. Got it in the root directory of the USB pen. The system info menu screens states that it recognises the USB pen. Grrrr.....
Hi Py99ajh. All I can think of is that it needs to be unzipped and all the contents put in the root of your drive and that the drive is probably best formatted FAT32. It's also probably best that it's freshly formatted and that nothing else is on there. Good luck! Once, none of that worked for me, so I perfomed the rescue procedure outlined in the last couple of pages of the manual. That worked fine.
It's got to be a FAT32 drive- I had exactly the same problem. If you unzip the firmware update into the root directory it will set up it's own folder and should detect.
An NTFS drive will even show up on the system pane but it can't read it. If you reboot with the NTFS drive in it will give you a message telling you it can't read the drive saying read error or something like that.
rosswakelin: I wanted to move to USB so I could then cut to DVD to for family members who missed the original airing because of work committments.
I have a MCE machine but it has even less WAF cos it dies every couple of days (not the box/windows, just MCE).
Fair enough, we're all in the same boat. Took me a while to get my head around not being able to do what we could functionality wise (not video quality wise) with a basic VCR. Even on PlayTV on the PS3 you're limited to max 4Gb file size due to the FAT32 restrictions on the external USB drives.
Have heard fantastic things about Media Centre in Win 7. What version are you using for yours that keeps crashing...
rosswakelin: I've only had my unit for 3 days, and the general impression is good. However, I bought it because I read in the online version of the manual that you can edit and SAVE TO USB DEVICE. Now this option does not exist in the current firmware, so I can not save shows for later viewing, give to friends who missed the episode etc. The reason I bought the Magic was because my DVD/HDD recorder had died, and I thought I would "upgrade" to a freeview device. Well, it turns out that that "upgrade" has cost me 799 and does not deliver on the functionality of a 299 DVD/HDD recorder. The WAF in the household has plummeted!!!! I tried to install the Hong Kong firmware (which does allow saving to USB), but there must be a hardware detection routine, because it refused to load. Oh well, back down the road to Noel Leeming for a DVD recorder I suppose. Anyone want to buy a (just) used MagicTV??
I posted my work on HT9200DTR and have updated it today. I can transfer files OK. Check it out.
Thanks everyone. Fat format sorted it!! My general impressions of the magic box are a bit dissapointing to be honest. I have been using a topfield in the uk on freeview and it's 5yr technology and ui is still way superior. Suggestions for magictv folk I'd they're listening:
- epg is dreadful! changes need to be made. If it means losing the freeview certification then it should be dropped like a stone! To start tneeds to be a grid version. Now and next is useless. This could surely be easily done by scraping epg data and populating it locally. If this was done would also allow searching of epg data for programs to record. Eg on topfield boxes you can enter in search term 'home*' and it would automatically record all future episodes of home and away (as well as everything else starting with home) in the future. (bad example, sorry).
- recorded menu. Should have more info per recording. Eg shows that have been partly played already should have a percentage played. At the very least partly played showed should not leave the 'not yet viewed menu'
- should be a one key shortcut to last played, last position recorded file
- slow motion. Half and quarter speed. Always very good for sport.
- the OSd logos are ridiculous. Why would anyone ever have them on? Blinking every 3 seconds. But they should pop up whenever you change channels and press the info screen. That way you know what's going on the box.
- when you are recording a show it should be integrated into the same menu as the recorded programs menu, rather than hidden in recording > recording options menu. You could just show recording in red, to allow to start watching from start.
- when you goto a program that is currently recording it should start automatically at the beginning, not where it's currently at in it's recording! Who wants to breifly see the a plot or sports game score when you want to start at the begining?!?
- when timeshifting it makes more sense to give you a time relative to live tv instead of start time, end time. Eg I start rewinding you would see -30secs, rewind more -2mins. Makes way more sense andore logical. (not sure how long you can time shift for on magic? 60mins on my old uk toppy was v adequate. At end of 60mins it would delete end of timeshift and record new data
- user program forward timeshift set time period. Eg red = forward 10, green f 30, yellow f 90sec , blue = back 30 sec. I read this is a nz freeview thing. See earlier comment on dropping like a stone!!!
I think I've written enough. But I have many other ideas. Anyhow, I really want to like my magic box but it can't be ignored that it could be so so much better with major improvements to the UI! Please magic folk, please!!!
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