MagicTV 3600.. my quick impression report (updated)

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377 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 40

#713173 6-Nov-2012 21:16

hi old fulla, the timer works fine and has done for more than a year of this full shutdown procedure. I turned off live pause many moons ago and it fixed lockups i was having during double record, it may be ok now since subsequent updates but im not going back :) the 2min overlap is my way of saying ADD 2 mins to the start of the program which will allow the recorder to come off sleep mode and still fire up in lots of time to not miss the start of the time slot . there are two ways to add time , a global one and a per recording one if i recall correctly. hope that helps :)

wklie

191 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

Trusted

MagicTV

#713179 6-Nov-2012 21:26

theoldfarter: What happens to the current time setting? Does the 3600 hold its time & date when there is no power to it?

The 3600 clock keeps running in standby mode, as shown in the front panel. If there is no power, it loses its clock. It will, however, update its clock from broadcast within 15 seconds after it is powered up. After that the scheduled recordings will resume.

theoldfarter

235 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 21

ID Verified

#713218 6-Nov-2012 22:06

Thanks Jimmy22 & wklie.

fatjulio

90 posts

Master Geek

#713219 6-Nov-2012 22:06

I've had a 3600 for about 2 years, and am experiencing the odd lock up. What I'm doing to try a alleviate this is go into the trash and manually delete files, so it doesn't run itself into a corner with space. It seems abit dicey with the until disk full option, that it will keep the disk basically full. Does anyone know if the other options, 1 week, 1 month etc are for how long to keep it in the trash, or in the main playback folder? If it's time in the trash, setting it to say, 1 week, should keep the disk reasonably free.

wklie

191 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

Trusted

MagicTV

#713298 7-Nov-2012 05:13

fatjulio: go into the trash and manually delete files, so it doesn't run itself into a corner with space.

This is a very good practice. Highly recommended.

Does anyone know if the other options, 1 week, 1 month etc are for how long to keep it in the trash, or in the main playback folder? If it's time in the trash, setting it to say, 1 week, should keep the disk reasonably free.

It's the time before Magic TV moves a programme from main folder to trash, not the time in trash.

RingoTB

118 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 3

#713390 7-Nov-2012 10:13

I've had a MagicTV for 3 years. About 8 months after my initial purchase I upgraded the HDD to a 2TB, then decided that was overkill and downgraded it to a 1TB. I have also been running the hacked 3.17 firmware. I've been reading the latest comments about the lock-ups and counting myself lucky that it has not happened to me.

Last night though, when I turned on the MagicTV, it did not start up. After switching it off at the mains and then back on, it went through the initial start up screen, but when the TV picture should have kicked in, the TV screen remained blank and the MagicTV display read Magic TV. Nothing else happened. I tried the Rescue procedure with a USB flash drive but it again did not start completely. The MagicTV display just sat at Rescue.

I removed the 1TB HDD, put in the original 500GB, loaded up the latest 3.18 firmware on a USB drive and launched the rescue procedure. After formatting the 500GB HDD and upgrading to the 3.18 firmware, the MagicTV worked perfectly.

I plugged the 1TB HDD into a PC and booted it from a Linux CD. I was able to mount the smaller 400MB partition with the timer data etc, but when I tried to mount the JFS partition I got the message that it was unable to mount it due to corrupt information. I don't recall the exact message. I am not very familiar with Linux so all I did was run an automatic disk recovery utility that may or may not have done anything (Hiren's boot cd). I then reinstalled the 1TB disk back into the MagicTV, and it started and worked perfectly. I then downgraded the firmware to 3.17 hacked, and everything is still working well.

I suspect that the lockups and/or freezing may be related to HDD data errors.

Hopefully the above information may be helpful to someone.

Mighty Ape

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PimpMyMagic

267 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 2

#713405 7-Nov-2012 10:40

Hey RingoTB.
Always good to get some rational thoughts on problem causes.
I, too, after running largely error free, have recently started getting occasional lock ups.

My HDD is running near full and I put the cause down to resultant drive errors or fragmentation.
Clearing off some files seems to have improved reliability.

I'm presently considering moving to a larger drive, but I'm not sure whether to go to 1 or 2 TB unit.

Does anyone know if the Magic does defragging automatically. I know of other units that do and I/ve heard drive activity (stepping) when it's sitting idle and powered up, so I wondered if that's what was happening.

evanh

152 posts

Master Geek

#713495 7-Nov-2012 13:14

Not defragging. The activity is the live recording feature thingy.

RingoTB:
The MTV does a disc check after it's had a power loss, ie: powered down for real. During this time it will display the logo and for some of the time it's just blank on screen. Takes a few minutes all up.

As for examining the contents from a desktop Linux, similar story, if the volume is not validated then issuing fsck.jfs will clean it up. This will be the same command the MTV is using.

RingoTB

118 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 3

#713504 7-Nov-2012 13:26

evanh:
The MTV does a disc check after it's had a power loss, ie: powered down for real. During this time it will display the logo and for some of the time it's just blank on screen. Takes a few minutes all up.

As for examining the contents from a desktop Linux, similar story, if the volume is not validated then issuing fsck.jfs will clean it up. This will be the same command the MTV is using.

Thanks for the info. Maybe I was not patient enough. I gave it 10 - 15 minutes then decided it was not going to start.

PimpMyMagic
For your info, when I upgraded to the 2TB HDD, it gave me the following estimate:
Remaining Disk Space: HD 346 hours, SD 647 hours

The 1TB was about half those figures.

Jimmy22

377 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 40

#713527 7-Nov-2012 13:57

1tb drive seems like a good plan then , HHD's do fail so having 22 x 8 hour days worth of watching on 1TB it seems like enough to me , and is WAY too much to lose if you really wanted to see everything you recorded . What drive are you guys currently buying , is it still the same one as about 50 pages ago ?

cb1

339 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 44

#713788 7-Nov-2012 20:30

I'm also considering upgrading the disk drive. My plan is to replace the 500GB in the Magictv box with a 1TB HDD, replace the 250GB HDD (also Western digital green) in a Panasonic DMR-XW350 with the 500GB and add the 250GB HDD into my pc. All are SATA drives.

Is it possible to format the new 1TB drive in the Magic box, copy files from the 2 partitions from the old drive to new one using a Windows 7 pc (previous posts described using Linux - would have to go via another drive), and similarly for the Panasonic, though not sure how many partitions it has. Will end up formatting the 250GB disk in the pc and performing a clean install of Windows 7. Anybody see a flaw in this plan? Maybe run chkdsk while the drive is in the pc to see what it says

I haven't had any lock ups for a substantial time, running 3.17 (modified) - was down to 7 hours available disk space, but after catching up on a few shows, I'm back to 40 hours available. What I have noticed is some 'auto restarts' - power on the unit with the remote, shows the picture/sound briefly, then shows a screen that it's going to restart (with an OK, but doesn't give you the chance to press OK) and then powers off and restarts. Does this suggest disk problems, or the 'running into the corner' issue somebody was suggesting earlier? - I haven't emptied the trash folder

Did try the disk repair - actually takes a few minutes to complete (screen goes blank and then restarts). Go in to disk repair again and it shows what happened at the date/time it was last attempted - showed no errors were found for me.

I briefly tried the beta 5.10 firmware, but had a issue where a 8x fast forward wouldn't stop till it reached the end of the recording, but the time scale didn't move from 1:53, so reverted back to 3.17. Otherwise, the 10 min back/forward skip is returned. Magic tv logo for radio stations is cool.

Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks

AliExpress

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Bob123

27 posts

Geek
+1 received by user: 1

#713809 7-Nov-2012 20:54

Certainly I have run a 2TB in the 3600 so obviously 1TB will be fine - thee are drive more ideally suited to running all the time ie the multimedia drive - in saying that though I was using a WD Green 2TB drive which worked fine , not sure on the Pana though as far as I am aware the firmware lock-down the HDD formatted size ie 500GB drive will only format as a 250GB in a Pana 350 (that is how they are able to make the next model bigger - without the concern that someone will just ut a bigger drive in it - cheers Robert

MurrayM

2502 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 742

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Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#713836 7-Nov-2012 21:22

What I have noticed is some 'auto restarts' - power on the unit with the remote, shows the picture/sound briefly, then shows a screen that it's going to restart (with an OK, but doesn't give you the chance to press OK) and then powers off and restarts. Does this suggest disk problems, or the 'running into the corner' issue somebody was suggesting earlier?

I've had this happen to me a couple of times in the last few weeks. I'm not sure what causes it. I haven't emptied my trash folder yet but I'll try that.

JefWright

85 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 2

#713876 7-Nov-2012 22:59

Jimmy22: i have my unit on a timer , it shuts off from 130am till 630am to save the 25w it draws for nothing even while "off" but i guess im giving it a reset and cool off period too. i switched off live pause a long while back and have overlap's set at 2mins so it falls in the cache without locking itself up over a conflict.

Some might argue that the extra thermal cycle is worse for modern electronics than sitting at a constant 30°C above ambient.
Do you know that the magic has a 2-minute RAM cache? If so, how does this avoid a conflict? Surely 2 minutes is still a problem if you've run out of tuners?

PimpMyMagic

267 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 2

#713895 8-Nov-2012 00:45

+1 on the practice of powering the box on and off on a daily basis.

I have my doubts on the advisability of this choice.

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