MagicTV - HDD upgrade & removing recordings

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1005 posts

Uber Geek

# 911687 9-Oct-2013 21:24

We have not observed any real world advantages of using PVR-versions of HDD on Magic TV, compared to the usual desktop versions, when the HDD is not faulty. When the HDD becomes faulty, we do not see any advantage or more graceful behavior from it either.

The only difference between the Green and AV-GP would be firmware settings like those for head parking and enabling support for the ATA streaming command set.

If the PVR doesn't explicitly support ATA streaming then I don't think it will be enabled. The WD Green head parking occurs after 8 seconds idle and causes a modest delay as the heads must reactivate before the platter can be accessed.

ATA streaming isn't just about performance but system stability. With a desktop HDD the files' stability is placed above system stability. So when a desktop HDD hits a bad sector error and takes too long to recover from the error a PVR will lock up. With ATA streaming the normal error correction checking is disabled for transmission stream files as a few 0s and 1s swapped in a M2TS between the drive and the CPU doesn't matter.

RAID systems expect a drive to support TLER or time limited error recovery. So if the HDD doesn't have a TLER timeout of 7s and spends 8s trying to recover from an error it's marked as failed and thrown out of the array. All desktop drives which don't have TLER enabled are inevitably thrown out of a standard RAID array for this reason. A drive without ATA streaming enabled or a low enough TLER in a PVR will cause a system crash once it hits a big enough error.

I would still get a Seagate ST2000VM003 in preference to the AV-GP as it's 5900rpm. The Seagate Pipeline HD drives are rebranded Seagate Green drives with the ATA streaming command set included.

But it's odd that the error message is never encountered whilst using 3.18, and the programmes always record.

From the 3.18 firmware release notes:
"Fix a booking problem with specific regional channels"

m0nkey

15 posts

Geek

# 911847 10-Oct-2013 07:35

Oh. Don't I feel like a knob.

Is there a patch for 3.18 that includes the 4 minds ffw/rwd?

bmoff

114 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

Subscriber

# 911894 10-Oct-2013 09:04

Been following this thread with interest. Ian, any chance of a 3.18 patch please?

bfginger

1005 posts

Uber Geek

# 913253 10-Oct-2013 20:23

Oh. Don't I feel like a knob.

I wouldn't worry too much about putting a Green in there. It's like the difference between 98 and 91, not diesel and petrol.

Is there a patch for 3.18 that includes the 4 minds ffw/rwd?

I don't think that's the latest firmware
http://www.magictv.com/nz/downloads/mtv3600_3_19NZb3.zip
They appear to have stopped development at 3.19b4. But as b4 was to address a specific Freeview fault that was reversed I don't know if it's wise to use it.

m0nkey

15 posts

Geek

# 913280 10-Oct-2013 21:23

Why is it that I can't see the link to 3.19 on either magictv.com/nz or magictv.co.nz? Both sites show 3.18 as the latest firmware for the 3600. And where are the release notes for it? Has it been removed??

I meant that I was a knob for not reading the release notes pertaining to regional TV stations. Our station did not go on to Freeview until May this year, about 12 months after 3.18 was released, so never bothered to check release notes.

bfginger

1005 posts

Uber Geek

# 913315 10-Oct-2013 21:54

3.19 was a development branch linked to from the 3600 thread but 3.20 never came. We can guess there may be relevant bugfixes in it over 3.18 unless we're told otherwise. I don't remember anybody complaining about 3.19 being unstable.

2lostkiwis

66 posts

Master Geek

# 913553 11-Oct-2013 11:54

m0nkey: Oh. Don't I feel like a knob.

Is there a patch for 3.18 that includes the 4 minds ffw/rwd?

Hi Rebecca,

I did 3.18 a long time ago but never released it. When upgrading mine something went wrong, and I had to use the recovery process to get it working again. I am not sure if it was a one off glitch or what. The second time it worked fine, and I have since also upgraded my parents unit, that went fine as well. Because of that event and that no-one asked for it, I didn't release it. It has been running 24x7 on those two units since release with no problems.

I did get one query from another forum member who was going to try it at some point, but I never heard back from him. I'm not sure if he tried it or not.

If you want to try it, the download link is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38226449/MTV3600v318NZpatchv15.zip

So just be aware that it's at your own risk. But if by chance you have a problem, it's likely it could be recovered with the MagicTV recovery process. I'd welcome any feedback/experiences you have.

Cheers, Ian.

2lostkiwis

66 posts

Master Geek

# 913556 11-Oct-2013 11:58

bfginger: 3.19 was a development branch linked to from the 3600 thread but 3.20 never came. We can guess there may be relevant bugfixes in it over 3.18 unless we're told otherwise. I don't remember anybody complaining about 3.19 being unstable.

Sorry I forgot to mention, I will have a go at 3.19b3 shortly...

cb1

270 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 913579 11-Oct-2013 12:54

2lostkiwis:

I did 3.18 a long time ago but never released it. When upgrading mine something went wrong, and I had to use the recovery process to get it working again. I am not sure if it was a one off glitch or what. The second time it worked fine, and I have since also upgraded my parents unit, that went fine as well. Because of that event and that no-one asked for it, I didn't release it. It has been running 24x7 on those two units since release with no problems.

I also had an occurrence of a glitch a couple of months ago - Using patched 3.17 but I wasn't doing any firmware loads at the time (or even recently). Just found the unit would power on, but wouldn't get past the initial display of 'MAGIC TV'. After trying a number of power off/ons, used the rescue procedure using original 3.18 (patched 3.17 wouldn't work and also had to use a different (much older, smaller) USB drive than I normally use for firmware updates). Then went back to patched 3.17 version and no further issues. All recordings and recording schedule were intact.

2lostkiwis:
If you want to try it, the download link is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38226449/MTV3600v318NZpatchv15.zip

Thanks for all the work you have done/are doing to create these patches. I've downloaded it and will give it a go. I noticed in the readmes that you've set the forward skip to 1 minute and back 8 secs - I think there was some discussion some time ago (also in the 3600 thread) about the merits of these skip times as opposed to 4 minutes back/forward, and you created a few patch versions with differing skip values

Would it be possible to specify the amount of time when the patch is being applied - either by user input or editing an extra data file?

Thanks again for your valiant efforts!

2lostkiwis

66 posts

Master Geek

# 913672 11-Oct-2013 14:08

cb1: Thanks for all the work you have done/are doing to create these patches. I've downloaded it and will give it a go. I noticed in the readmes that you've set the forward skip to 1 minute and back 8 secs - I think there was some discussion some time ago (also in the 3600 thread) about the merits of these skip times as opposed to 4 minutes back/forward, and you created a few patch versions with differing skip values. Would it be possible to specify the amount of time when the patch is being applied - either by user input or editing an extra data file? Thanks again for your valiant efforts!

Unfortunately it's not something that can be easily parameterised. The values are bytes in a shared library (like DLL) that are on a linux file system. So they are changed right at the beginning of a long process of steps that would not be easy to automate. And AFAIK it would have to be done under Linux, so not really that friendly to start with.

I can change them to any arbitrary value, but due to time constraints would prefer not to have to create different versions. That's pretty much when I just ended up sticking with what I used :-) Naturally you'll never please everyone even with many different settings, so I think any other choice would have to based on "the greatest good" - maybe someone wants to set up a poll to find the other most requested setting?

Having said that, it seems FW development has slow/stopped? so perhaps it's not a big deal after all.

Cheers,
Ian.

cb1

270 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 913698 11-Oct-2013 14:59

Thanks Ian for the explanation. Sorry it's not as easy as I thought it might have been.

My favourite would be 4 mins back/forward - as well as the obvious ad skip, it's still easy to jump through the rest of a recording to the get the bit you want to play. I imagine that this would be pretty tedious with 1 min forward 8 secs back (especially back! - I'm sure that sometimes it would be easier to restart from the beginning and work forward)

I realise 1 min forward, 8 secs back is better for skipping slightly shorter than normal ad breaks.

Any other votes?

Jimmy22

375 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 913747 11-Oct-2013 16:23

looking at this drive http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=1309424 it says its a sata3 connector , is that what the current drive is ? i have never opened my box but i get the feeling its due for a swap out . im thinking of running out to christmas and watching the series of it and doing a clean start on the 3.18 release. MTV3700 is only another 370 dollars and doesnt use 25watts on standby , more like 0.5w . i guess i could get 2-300 for the mtv3600 ?? tough call if those numbers stack up .

JefWright

85 posts

Master Geek

# 913780 11-Oct-2013 17:53

cb1: My favourite would be 4 mins back/forward - as well as the obvious ad skip, it's still easy to jump through the rest of a recording to the get the bit you want to play. I imagine that this would be pretty tedious with 1 min forward 8 secs back (especially back! - I'm sure that sometimes it would be easier to restart from the beginning and work forward)

I realise 1 min forward, 8 secs back is better for skipping slightly shorter than normal ad breaks.

Any other votes?

An enthusiastic vote here for 1min forward, 8 secs back. Choice in particular often has 1 min ad breaks. It might be great to key in a known offset or increment and hit skip but that would be an entirely different thing from simple ad skipping. I can't think when I've ever wanted to skip backwards through a recording apart from overshooting an ad break.
Cheers, Jef.

m0nkey

15 posts

Geek

# 913798 11-Oct-2013 18:37

Hi Ian

Another vote here for 4 mins forward and 4 mins back. Don't don't really use the 4 mins back function though, so wldn't be upset if this was a different value ;-)

In the meantime, I will give your 3.18 patch a test run.

Thanks again
Rebecca

bfginger

1005 posts

Uber Geek

# 913810 11-Oct-2013 18:49

Jimmy, I've got a SATA III drive in my MTV now so that should also be compatible.

To be honest I'd find an 8s jump back unusable.

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