Interesting regarding 1080i. I'm guessing that the interlace isn't exactly the same as was present in SD broadcasts? There's no combing for a start, just two identical clean frames (25 x2) in the TS. Why do they still insist on broadcasting at 50 fps? Surely all digital TVs are capable of running at 25 fps? I'm sure there's some legacy reason for it though. It would make it a lot simpler when editing and saving these recordings if it was just 25 fps (or 24). The 50Hz flicker is quite apparent in panning shots that I don't see on BD.
Hi katipo There should be a difference between material shot on film and on video cameras. i.e. sports coverage should be shot at 50i (or 50p and then interlaced). i.e. each field has been shot at a different point in time.
Film-based content like American dramas, etc should as you say be shot at 24fps or 25fps progressive and then 24fps gets upsped by 4% for broadcast. i.e. the consecutive fields have been shot at the same time.
Both of these formats are broadcast as 1080i 50 in (formerly I guess) PAL territories.
Edit: I should add - in America there were two broadcast HD standards - 720p60 for video-based material and 1080i60 for film-based material. I think this was a good system and I wish it was taken worldwide, but alas, no.
Does anyone know if the US has retained this system?
TV shows should be shot at 50Hz! I cringe every time I see the shuddering framerate. Some still are at 50Hz luckily. 25Hz sucks. It's about time movies picked up the pace too, now that they can.
bfginger is right too, direct decode to the HDMI port should be an option. And also the component port too would be a nice bonus.
I've finally got around to editing some of my MTV recordings on the PC, and I'm still trying to get an idea of all the broadcast formats. So far I've found: 576i 25fps, 720p 50fps, 720p 50fps (double)*, and 1080i 25fps.
Most recordings frame step normally with a change of scene between frames, except this weird 'double' format - showing a double up of identical frames, resulting in this weird effect. The show "The Pacific" was transmitted/recorded like this. Jungle scenes where the camera moves across and down, with palm trees in the foreground look like a jerky rotoscope animation. Scenes where the camera stays in one position are not so noticeable. Maybe it has something to do with being shot with special digital cameras for that documentary look, and a weird source frame rate?
I had assumed that all my 720p recordings would be the same, but they're not. These "Pacific" TS recordings (entire show) confused the PS3, it jumped back and forward between inter frames by huge amounts (glitch). So I needed to remux as a MP4 to keep it happy and relatively smooth.
Tip: If you're planning on saving your MTV recordings, don't edit the adverts on the MTV unit! It completely stuffs up the transport streams making for difficult repairs later on the PC.
The meta info in the streams appear to be messed up. I was getting reports of 100Hz from it on one series when it was clearly still only 25Hz.
Interlaced is always 50Hz so it can only be 1080i50. And almost all 720p are 720p25 via progressive encoding over a 50Hz interlaced stream. Just like DVD's do it.
The one good part about this practice is it doesn't require any actual mode changes to flip back and forth. It can be altered on a field by field basis. Or course, this can upset things when the even and odd fields aren't agreed on.
Hi, I see this thread has been going for a while. I have had a magic tv for about 4-5 months and have had problems with it freezing and the recording not continuing.
Eg: was chase playing while it was recording the programme, went to faster forward add and it just froze, the whole unit and remote wouldn't do anything. had to turn off and on at the back. When I went back to the place it froze, it hadn't recorded anything after that.
Has also happened when recording live TV and watching something else pre-recorded.
Do I need to be connected to the internet to get updates to fix this problem? I read people talking about updates?
I found it fantastic apart from this problem and would hate to have to dig for the receipt to return it.
Tracymac: Hi, I see this thread has been going for a while.? I have had a magic tv for about 4-5 months and have had problems with it freezing and the recording not continuing.
Eg: was chase playing while it was recording the programme, went to faster forward add and it just froze, the whole unit and remote wouldn't do anything.? had to turn off and on at the back.? When I went back to the place it froze, it hadn't recorded anything after that.
Current recommendation is to return the unit for repair. A new blank unit is often supplied as a replacement to fix these sorts of problems. I'm considering doing this as my solution also but so far haven't actioned on it.
Do I need to be connected to the internet to get updates to fix this problem?? I read people talking about updates?
Current updates don't fix the above problem so it's unknown if it's a software or hardware issue.
Plugging into your LAN works for updates but most people in this thread use a USB drive for updating from a manually downloaded firmware. Read back a little, you'll find the favourite revision firmware to download is http://www.magictv.com/downloads/mtv3600_3_13NZbet6.zip
Is anyone else still losing channels on their MagicTV? Most of mine drop off every 2-3 weeks. When it happens the only channels showing are 1,2,6,7 - the TVNZ channels. Everything else is missing - which I read comes from MediaWorks and Kordia transmitters.
I live in Botany Downs on the hill with a clear view west, south and north. I have tried updating the firmware and am currently on 3.13 beta I think it is.
Occasionally a restart will work (only after I do another channel re-scan), although usually when the channels are missing I'm out of luck for hours, sometimes even days. It's bloody frustrating when I'm relying on the channels being available for various scheduled recordings.
MagicTV support have been great on the phone trying to help me but the problem persists. The aerial signal strengths are all good by the way.
gpf: Firstly I have never had this problem and I don't know if those that have, have managed to resolve it or not with out replacing the whole magic box. But earlier in this thread it is mentioned that the magic box's don't like receiving the old analog signal. So if you have both VHF and UHF going into the magic from your aerial and the magic box shows a good signal then it may still be the VHF signal causing the problem. Try just a UHF aerial only. It has also been mentioned that a signal that is too strong can also cause problems. There is something that can be purchased quite cheaply that will reduce the signal strength to solve this problem as well. You may have tried all of this already and it is just a couple of suggestions that are quite easy and cheap to try. Hope it is of some help.
gpf: Is anyone else still losing channels on their MagicTV? Most of mine drop off every 2-3 weeks. When it happens the only channels showing are 1,2,6,7 - the TVNZ channels. Everything else is missing - which I read comes from MediaWorks and Kordia transmitters.
Early 3.13beta revisions had that problem. 3.13beta6 fixed it for everyone as far as I know.
gpf: Is anyone else still losing channels on their MagicTV? Most of mine drop off every 2-3 weeks. When it happens the only channels showing are 1,2,6,7 - the TVNZ channels. Everything else is missing - which I read comes from MediaWorks and Kordia transmitters.
Early 3.13beta revisions had that problem. 3.13beta6 fixed it for everyone as far as I know.
It didn't for me. I think they drop off during a moment of bad reception. Either weak signal or too much non UHF. I'm only speculating.
evanh: bfginger is right too, direct decode to the HDMI port should be an option. And also the component port too would be a nice bonus.
Screen resolution pass-through should be easier to do over analogue than HDMI from a technical standpoint.
Nutts: But earlier in this thread it is mentioned that the magic box's don't like receiving the old analog signal. So if you have both VHF and UHF going into the magic from your aerial and the magic box shows a good signal then it may still be the VHF signal causing the problem. Try just a UHF aerial only.
Or as someone mentioned you can buy a high pass filter to block frequences outside the UHF range used by Freeview.
Another feature the MagicTV should have is to automatically jump to 32x fast forward or rewind when holding the button down for a couple of moments instead of having to press it five times.
2lostkiwis: Has anyone noticed the following page? http://www.magictv.co.nz/downloads/MagicTV_Sourcecode.pdf
Looks like you're the first to follow up on it. That pdf was listed in this thread earlier I believe. Good to see you back btw. Your website vanished there for a while. Evan
Hmmm problems with a crappy host but sorted now :-)
Well it's late but just wanted to report on some breaking news, I am this close to being able to change the skip times from the fixed 10 minutes. Here's the background:
I knew 3.13beta6 had different times set (10 forward and 6 back)... so this was a good point for comparison to the new firmware where it returned to 10 both ways.
I looked at the executable and associated libraries. I found that I could run the 3.13beta6 executable with the 3.14 libraries and the time skip was back to 10 minutes both ways. This meant that the difference was not the executable, so perhaps in the external libraries? I went through the process running the 3.14 firmware/libraries and changing one at a time a library to the 3.13beta6 firmware. And I found the library! It is called libdfmgr.so.
The best news yet is the differences in the file between the 3.13beta6 and 3.14. The difference is just 2 bytes!!!
The differences are in a function called DFMPlayerController::SkipChapter(DFM_COMMAND_T, void *, void *)
Here's the disassembled code snippets of the two versions.
V3.14 firmware (10 minutes forward and back) lui $v0, 0xFFFF b loc_1D814 ori $s2, $v0, 0x15A0
V3.13b6 firmware (10 minutes forward and 6 minutes back) lui $v0, 0xFFFF b loc_1D814 ori $s2, $v0, 0x7360
So the question is, what do you change it to get 30 seconds forward and 8 seconds back (what the manual for the Hong Kong version says they are set to).
Well, I will experiment more tomorrow and perhaps take a look at the Hong Kong firmware. At least now I have the 10 min forward and 6 min back trick back on the latest firmware.
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