I can honestly say that i have never had a problem with my Magic Tv. I have had the unit for around 10 months now. Maybe it's the newer models which have faults? Ok the ffwd problem still hasn't been completely fixed yet,but hopefully future firmware upgrades will sort that out.
This is the first time, in the six months I've had the MTV, that I've complained about the crashing so it's not something I'd worried too much about until now. I hadn't previously noticed anything missing as a result.
But I had noticed it actually occur a few times, where I would arrive home and turn on the tele and find the picture alternating between a frozen display and blank display every few seconds. Nothing on the remote works, only the physical power switch on the rear of the MTV box revives it.
Maybe I need to get it swapped for a new MTV, dunno how this is to be tested as a fault though. It's a pretty rare occurrence.
That's nothing. I do similar sort of stuff for a living.
Got complimented on how clean my old Panasonic HS2 was when I got them to replace the dead HDD under the 5 year warranty. I'd tested it's HDD outside of the recorder before deciding it was indeed dead. At the time it didn't worry me either way because I knew I could fit a new HDD myself if they refused to for whatever reason. I even told them so when sending it back again to put a quieter HDD in.
Has anyone noticed the following page? http://www.magictv.co.nz/downloads/MagicTV_Sourcecode.pdf
I can only find it referenced on google, no web page linking to it. At the moment it looks like their webserver configuration has changed because it is allowing directory listings of the download directory (a good time to grab all previous versions): http://www.magictv.co.nz/downloads/
The PDF does mention that some of the source code has been patched, and that these patches are available in another archive, but this doesn't appear to exist in the downloads folder.
A lot of the software is licensed under GPL 2.0. They still appear to be violating a few conditions: 1) No source code supplied and no written offer to distribute the source code. 2) Not supplying the patch files http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Anyway, besides that, I upgraded mine to 3.14 and lost my telnet access. The good news is that they have left the root password the same as previous versions and it was a quick matter to enable it with the serial console port. I have noticed there appears to be more support for wireless adapters in this version - the kernel modules are actually present.
I ordered an RS-232 level translator (DS14C335) to fit the board as recommended by evanh. I just fitted it and it's working great. The only real reason I need the console port is to reenable telnet access with each new firmware version. A better way around this is that the telnet daemon can be enabled by the magic tv executable if it exits with errorlevel 2. The big question, is how do you get the magic tv executable to do this? There are other error levels that are used to do the hard drive filesystem check, format, and full mux recording.
I wonder if it's some wierd button presses on the remote, or hidden menus...
What is the difference between keeping a recording "protected" verses keeping a recording "forever"?
There are a couple of features the MagicTV really needs.
There needs to be a way of marking a viewed recording as being unviewed again. It is too easy to watch the wrong recording by mistake or watch a few seconds and then it is no longer listed as unviewed.
There also needs to be an auto video output mode to pass through to the TV each channel's broadcast resolution. MagicTV users shouldn't have to manually change the video output format when changing stations. Not everybody has a 1080p TV.
So I recently picked one of these up, and it's quite nice not living in the stone age, that's for certain.
My one concern is the amount of noise from it. There's a very noticeable clicking or clunking sound when it's operating, which I'm assuming is the hard drive access. It's perfectly consistent in interval; basically just sounds like an old mechanical clock. Is this normal? It'd be a warning flag if I was putting a PC together, but I'm not sure what to expect here.
Altmaster: There's a very noticeable clicking or clunking sound when it's operating, which I'm assuming is the hard drive access.
Quiet ticking is the head moving from track to track. That's certainly normal. It's easier to hear this level when there isn't any fans whirring away.
These are normal hard discs though, same as with computers, so if it's a stretch of clunking that goes away after a while then that is bad and does need replaced.
evanh: Quiet ticking is the head moving from track to track. That's certainly normal. It's easier to hear this level when there isn't any fans whirring away.
These are normal hard discs though, same as with computers, so if it's a stretch of clunking that goes away after a while then that is bad and does need replaced.
Guess I can stop worrying then. It's definitely a consistent noise, and by noticeable I mean when the TV muted :P Thanks!
The aspect ratio setting does not have anything to do with the broadcast display resolution.
Digital TV channels in NZ all broadcast in 576i and 1080i display resolutions. The MagicTV can upscale to 1080p but just setting the MagicTV to 1080p has two potential problems. The first is your TV might be a good one that upscales 576i better than the MagicTV does. The second is many flat panel televisions don't use a standard resolution but something odd like 768x1337 which the MagicTV doesn't scale to. The lack of a pass-through mode means channels are being scaled twice or not being scaled as well as they should be. The MagicTV's upscaling is very soft like it was programmed with LCDs and low bitrate MPEG-2 in mind. Pass-through mode is a big selling point because not having it can be a real pain for some people.
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