MagicTV 3600.. my quick impression report (updated)

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › MagicTV 3600.. my quick impression report (updated)

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#445521 4-Mar-2011 14:55

evanh: Well, the display resolution is not even slightly relevant to this conversation

Well yeah it is, though not necessarily related to your specific issue with the EPG.

The EPG is slow at changing through items when they are not on the page. What I'm saying is, the EPG appears to have been developed to be very clear to read, especially on a smaller TV. I think they could now release a newer version with more content on the screen. The HD resolution gives more screen real estate and this could be populated with more info which should make it faster to navigate.

Or, they could release the EIT data a bit more and we could use the native EPG of the magic box itself which would be super fast, but that's another story.

evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#445693 4-Mar-2011 23:20

Jaxson:
evanh: Well, the display resolution is not even slightly relevant to this conversation
Well yeah it is, though not necessarily related to your specific issue with the EPG.

It's speed we're talking about. Adding screen clutter isn't going to improve speed, so, irrelevant is the correct category.

Using less bloated libs and doing a decent job of coding the damn thing in the first place. That's what fixes these poorly implemented systems.

The EPG is slow at changing through items when they are not on the page.

It's too slow at cursoring down the list even on the one page. The number of visible lines doesn't have a great impact. Not that that helps with scrolling through the whole week either way.

What would make a real difference is the cursor always move the instant the arrow button is pressed. Ie, Stop drawing up the blurbs about the current program entry and immediately move to the next program entry and start drawing the blurbs about it instead. And if the button is pressed again then same again, stop what is being drawn up and obey the damn command.

That's the simpleness of it. That should be the norm for all user interfaces everywhere. It's not hard to do but seldom do I ever see it done.

What I'm saying is, the EPG appears to have been developed to be very clear to read, especially on a smaller TV.

That's good. That's more generic that way. And if it was fast there wouldn't be any issues with Freeview's layout.

... and we could use the native EPG of the magic box itself which would be super fast ...

You presume. Snapshots don't show it's speed.

evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#445698 4-Mar-2011 23:54

I guess, for this sort of thing, I really mean responsiveness when I say speed. The current speed of drawing doesn't worry me.

kiwidownunder

33 posts

Geek

#447412 10-Mar-2011 21:16

To all of the people who have a Magic Tv with a display problem...(The horizontal bars which make up the letters and numbers on the display are dimmer than the vertical bars.)
I returned my unit to Bond and Bond while it was within the 12 month warranty period two weeks ago. They sent the Magic Box away for repair and the display was replaced.
A friend of mine also has a Magic box with the same display problem. There may have been a batch released with faulty displays.If yours is the same, i recommend you send it in for a replacement display before the warranty period ends.Cheers.

theoldfarter

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#448721 15-Mar-2011 22:38

I live in Masterton & have been told that Digital Terrestrial will start transmission here in June this year.
That gives me time to consider what PVR to get. I have read every post in this thread & what an interesting & informative thread it is. I think I will buy the MagicTV when transmission starts.

Assuming that I do and it comes with the latest firmware, will I be able to install firmware 13beta6, which is, I believe, the one that has the 10min forward, 6 min back jumps?

Any thoughts about a new model being released in the near future?
Hate to buy & new model comes out 3 months later. LOL

kiwidownunder

33 posts

Geek

#448949 16-Mar-2011 16:58

Yes. You can wind back to an earlier firmware. Just save the firmware you want to a usb flash drive,Plug it in the usb input at the back of the Magic tv and install. Make sure you only have the one firmware upgrade at a time on the flash drive though.
I think the Aussies might be getting a new model Magic tv.Not sure about NZ though .

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evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#454423 2-Apr-2011 03:07

gpf: Evan, nice work with the 1T disk replacement. Did you happen to try inserting the new disk first and see if the magic box could format it for you? I was thinking that might be easier and then once formatted, you could pull the disk and copy files across on the computer...

In case everyone is still waiting for me to try this, I now have.

I guess it's bad news really. The MTV does not format, partition, or create a filesystem on the internal drive in any way. Neither automatically nor manually from the menus. The Repair HDD menu only creates the recording files in the already existing volumes. And both the ext3 and the jfs volumes are needed to be fully functioning on the HDD.

So, apart from the file copies that I'd also done, everything else was a required step.

Just two steps really:

1. Partition the HDD as two linux partitions (Type 0x83) in an MBR type partition table. First partition, for a few hundred meg. Second partition, the rest of the disc.

2. Create an ext3 filesystem on the first partition. Create a jfs filesystem on the second partition.

Some disc tools may be able to combine both steps but I had to use three shell commands - parted, mkfs.ext3, and mkfs.jfs

Cheers,
Evan

evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#454424 2-Apr-2011 03:13

The actual commands (My drive was connected as second HDD - /dev/sdb) ended up being:

$ sudo parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary ext3 4kiB 200MiB
$ sudo parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary jfs 200MiB 100%
$ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1
$ sudo mkfs.jfs /dev/sdb2

evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#454425 2-Apr-2011 03:43

Err, Repair HDD doesn't create anything I don't think. The recording files/directories are put on immediately the first time the HDD is found with empty volumes.

Repair prolly just runs fsck.ext3 and fsck.jfs and updates some stats accordingly.

evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#454427 2-Apr-2011 06:34

Oh, minor detail, I'd already wiped the drive and put an MBR table on it by other means. Looks like the parted command is mktable msdos.

Delorean

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#454445 2-Apr-2011 09:27

I have noticed they have released 3.15 Firmware - its says it's a minor update, no changes. It's just stability fixes

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evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#454824 3-Apr-2011 15:58

Oops, I didn't try something I should have but as it happens it doesn't seem to matter ... It doesn't have to be an MBR partition table at all. The much newer GUID partition table scheme works fine too.

I no longer have the original data so can't say what was actually used by Pixel Magic.

Cool, I've been waiting for something like GPT to exist on the PC since the 1980's. Sorry, I'm only just learning of it's existence. MBR was always so terribly broken with it's piecemeal CHS world view. Sad that it's taken yet another barrier (The 2TB limit) to bring on this change. On the other hand GPT looks a bit overkill too.

A more future-proof procedure would be:

$ sudo parted /dev/sdb mktable gpt
$ sudo parted /dev/sdb mkpart listings 0% 200MiB
$ sudo parted /dev/sdb mkpart recordings 200MiB 100%
$ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1
$ sudo mkfs.jfs /dev/sdb2

A command to check the table would be (My example with the old 500GB drive):

$ sudo parted /dev/sdb print free
Model: ATA WDC WD5000AVVS-6 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
17.4kB 1049kB 1031kB Free Space
1 1049kB 210MB 209MB ext3 listings
2 210MB 500GB 500GB jfs recordings
500GB 500GB 7680B Free Space

You can see there is a small amount of free space at both the beginning and end of the HDD. This appears to be some aligning factor. It's probably Parted being over cautious using 1MB boundaries like that but I've been wrong many times already, it is possible the HDD is telling Parted to partition on these boundaries.

You could also mount it and test some file copying if you like. Other than that, unplug the HDD and install it in the MTV. You're good to go.

Evan

evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#454828 3-Apr-2011 16:15

Have to say this forum software is a bit difficult to deal with! Trying to fix up formatting gets blocked pretty quickly. :(

evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#454829 3-Apr-2011 16:17

Ok, trying again, I'm trying to get the text to be fixed size ...

Nope, that didn't work either. :(

casewindow

310 posts

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#455036 4-Apr-2011 10:46

I have a Magic TV that is on 3.12 using optical.

I want to switch to Coaxial (as my reciever has only 2xCoax and 2xOptical and I want to re-use the optical for something else).

Are there any downsides to Coaxial vs Optical for digital out?

Also - is it worth updating to 3.15? The only problem I have on 3.12 is that the ff/rw is irritating but apart from that I haven't had any of the strange "stopped recording after an hour" type problems that some people report.

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