MagicTV 3700TD - Opinions

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61 posts

Master Geek

#525707 26-Sep-2011 10:17

Another little bug I've noticed on the 3700...

When I press mute on the remote, the screen pauses briefly.

So far, this is the only command that does this, that I've noticed.

Also played with the rewind a bit last night. It's shockingly bad! Almost unusable. (Note: I think I was still recording another channel while I was watching a recording, so this may have impacted the rewind/HD performance.)

MightyApe

You will find anything you want at MightyApe (affiliate link).

nigelb999

37 posts

Geek

#525718 26-Sep-2011 11:05

CraigHumphrey: Another little bug I've noticed on the 3700...

When I press mute on the remote, the screen pauses briefly.

So far, this is the only command that does this, that I've noticed.

Yes I've noticed that as well. I don't understand why it does that.

CraigHumphrey: Also played with the rewind a bit last night. It's shockingly bad! Almost unusable. (Note: I think I was still recording another channel while I was watching a recording, so this may have impacted the rewind/HD performance.)

Yep - this surprises me the most about a model that's supposed to have a faster processor than the 3600 model. Often during rewind the unit momentarily locks-up and freezes on an earlier frame for about 5 seconds (during which time the unit doesn't even respond to any remote control commands). Then once it starts to rewind, the video frames are so choppy that it's practically unusable. I hate having to go back just a couple of seconds because I end up not going back far enough, or going back too far. FF 1.5x and 2x is fine, but the rest of the speeds going forwards and backwards is shocking!!!

My suggestion to you, and others having these same issues with 3700, is to email the NZ support team: support@magictv.co.nz

If there are enough emails complaining about the same thing hopefully they'll take it seriously and do something about it for a future firmware update release.

GraemeD

11 posts

Geek

#525951 26-Sep-2011 19:21

Thanks for the advice Jimmy 22 but this still won't load the AU firmware. I have tried this swapping between AU firmware versions and this works fine but something about the NZ firmware won't load on an AU box.

Has anyone done this successfully?

Thinking of selling my MTV4000 with AU firmware and just going to JB HIFI to get the NZ version. Anyone interested and I will put on trademe or whatever and you can see if you can get this to work.

mentalinc

2747 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#525964 26-Sep-2011 20:12

It might to way to simple but open the file with a text editor and change the 5.03NZto something like 5.02AU.

Parents are heading over to Aussie for the Grand Final (GO THE WARRIORS) so if can solve this before this time next week they could buy one over there.

Also what is the error message you're getting when you try and load the NZ firmware?
Does the Magic TV have an internet connection when you trying to upgrade?

Stage 2 in the NZ .zip looks interesting.....

CPU: AMD 5900x | RAM: GSKILL Trident Z Neo RGB F4-3600C16D-32GTZNC-32-GB | MB: Asus X570-E | GFX: EVGA FTW3 Ultra RTX 3080Ti| Monitor: LG 27GL850-B 2560x1440

Quic: https://account.quic.nz/refer/473833 R473833EQKIBX

bfginger

1237 posts

Uber Geek

#525979 26-Sep-2011 20:44

When I press mute on the remote, the screen pauses briefly.

The 3600 does that too.

Also played with the rewind a bit last night. It's shockingly bad! Almost unusable. (Note: I think I was still recording another channel while I was watching a recording, so this may have impacted the rewind/HD performance.)

This is why I'd want 5mins jump-back over 8s :) It is a little slower while busy doing other things.

It might to way to simple but open the file with a text editor and change the 5.03NZto something like 5.02AU.

Text and binary usually require different editors.

GraemeD

11 posts

Geek

#525984 26-Sep-2011 20:58

mentalinc if you want a AU box, (which presumably would only be if I can get mine to work), CrazyStu will ship to NZ and they seem to be the best price and are online only

SubmarinerDTV

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#526026 26-Sep-2011 22:44

CraigHumphrey: Another little bug I've noticed on the 3700...

When I press mute on the remote, the screen pauses briefly.

So far, this is the only command that does this, that I've noticed.

Also played with the rewind a bit last night. It's shockingly bad! Almost unusable. (Note: I think I was still recording another channel while I was watching a recording, so this may have impacted the rewind/HD performance.)

The mute bug does not happen on the Australian version and the rewind is ok, not bad, not great. Should be something they could fix in the NZ firmware. Do they use the 1TB Hitachi AV hard drive in the NZ 3700?

nigelb999

37 posts

Geek

#526067 27-Sep-2011 09:36

SubmarinerDTV:
CraigHumphrey: Another little bug I've noticed on the 3700...

When I press mute on the remote, the screen pauses briefly.

So far, this is the only command that does this, that I've noticed.

Also played with the rewind a bit last night. It's shockingly bad! Almost unusable. (Note: I think I was still recording another channel while I was watching a recording, so this may have impacted the rewind/HD performance.)

The mute bug does not happen on the Australian version and the rewind is ok, not bad, not great. Should be something they could fix in the NZ firmware. Do they use the 1TB Hitachi AV hard drive in the NZ 3700?

Well I had another play with the rewind last night while nothing was recording and even with full system resource available it's just terrible! I don't know who did the testing before they released the 3700 - seriously! Sometimes it got stuck on a frame, other times it jumped and stuttered through rewind. I purposely tried over and over again to see how easy and accurate it was to quickly rewind back around 10-30 seconds of footage (in case I had missed some essential dialog in a movie), and it's a nightmare! Thank goodness it does a great job of recording HD programmes, otherwise the FF/RW feature would have been a deal breaker for me.

I received back an email suggesting it was the processor's inability to deal with the info required for handling video at those speeds, but... isn't that what the faster processor installed in the 3700 was intended for? (or what else was it for?) And why do other HD recorders (Panasonic) on the market do a much better job at fast forwarding and rewind? And besides, how can the processor easily handle 2x forward speed but not -2x backward speed - isn't it the same amount of information being processed at any given time?

nigelb999

37 posts

Geek

#526068 27-Sep-2011 09:43

Has anyone noticed channel lockout during recordings? Last night I was recording two channels at the same time, TV1 and MTV, while I was watching TV2... when I went to change channels to TV3 or TV4 it said "Recording in progress. Can't change to that channel.". Maybe I'm missing something here, but that doesn't make sense to me. I was already watching a non-recording channel (TV2) so why wouldn't it let me swap to another non-recording channel (TV3)? Can anyone please explain this? Thanks.

CraigHumphrey

61 posts

Master Geek

#526073 27-Sep-2011 09:55

nigelb999: Well I had another play with the rewind last night while nothing was recording and even with full system resource available it's just terrible! I don't know who did the testing before they released the 3700 - seriously! Sometimes it got stuck on a frame, other times it jumped and stuttered through rewind. I purposely tried over and over again to see how easy and accurate it was to quickly rewind back around 10-30 seconds of footage (in case I had missed some essential dialog in a movie), and it's a nightmare! Thank goodness it does a great job of recording HD programmes, otherwise the FF/RW feature would have been a deal breaker for me.

I received back an email suggesting it was the processor's inability to deal with the info required for handling video at those speeds, but... isn't that what the faster processor installed in the 3700 was intended for? (or what else was it for?) And why do other HD recorders (Panasonic) on the market do a much better job at fast forwarding and rewind? And besides, how can the processor easily handle 2x forward speed but not -2x backward speed - isn't it the same amount of information being processed at any given time?

I guess the problem of rewind is two-fold.

1. The disk is effectivly having to seek backwards, which is not the same, performance-wise, as seeking/reading forwards. So you'll loose some performance there.
2. The video CODEC is designed to be played forwards. So to visually rewind, say, 5 seconds, you have to seek back 5 seconds, then back further until you find the previous key frame, then read forwards until the current spot, storing each frame in it's entirety (or recoding in a rewindable format) then start playing that video clip in reverse...

Now I'm not a video expert, so I'm only guessing around the CODEC limitations, based on my limited understanding of how modern video CODECs work.

Now that doesn't explain why other PVR/DVD/Bluray devices give a great rewind experience, but it does point out that it's not as simple as it seems. It's not like VHS (or say uncompressed digital video), where every frame is stored, in it's entirety.

After a week or two, I'll compile my niggles and pass them on to MagicTV.

BTW I see HongKong has a MTV7000 which streams content to your LAN... Looks like quite a different beast though...

nigelb999

37 posts

Geek

#526078 27-Sep-2011 10:09

CraigHumphrey:
nigelb999: Well I had another play with the rewind last night while nothing was recording and even with full system resource available it's just terrible! I don't know who did the testing before they released the 3700 - seriously! Sometimes it got stuck on a frame, other times it jumped and stuttered through rewind. I purposely tried over and over again to see how easy and accurate it was to quickly rewind back around 10-30 seconds of footage (in case I had missed some essential dialog in a movie), and it's a nightmare! Thank goodness it does a great job of recording HD programmes, otherwise the FF/RW feature would have been a deal breaker for me.

I received back an email suggesting it was the processor's inability to deal with the info required for handling video at those speeds, but... isn't that what the faster processor installed in the 3700 was intended for? (or what else was it for?) And why do other HD recorders (Panasonic) on the market do a much better job at fast forwarding and rewind? And besides, how can the processor easily handle 2x forward speed but not -2x backward speed - isn't it the same amount of information being processed at any given time?

I guess the problem of rewind is two-fold.

1. The disk is effectivly having to seek backwards, which is not the same, performance-wise, as seeking/reading forwards. So you'll loose some performance there.
2. The video CODEC is designed to be played forwards. So to visually rewind, say, 5 seconds, you have to seek back 5 seconds, then back further until you find the previous key frame, then read forwards until the current spot, storing each frame in it's entirety (or recoding in a rewindable format) then start playing that video clip in reverse...

Now I'm not a video expert, so I'm only guessing around the CODEC limitations, based on my limited understanding of how modern video CODECs work.

Now that doesn't explain why other PVR/DVD/Bluray devices give a great rewind experience, but it does point out that it's not as simple as it seems. It's not like VHS (or say uncompressed digital video), where every frame is stored, in it's entirety.

After a week or two, I'll compile my niggles and pass them on to MagicTV.

BTW I see HongKong has a MTV7000 which streams content to your LAN... Looks like quite a different beast though...

Thanks Craig - I can understand essentially what you're saying. I'm no video expert either but I'm also sure it would have something to do with CODEC processing/limitations. But, just as you suggested, the question remains... why then do the other PVR/DVD/Bluray devices have much better rewind performance? And what then was the 'faster processor' in the 3700 intended for if not for exactly that?

wklie

191 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

MagicTV

#526247 27-Sep-2011 15:25

CraigHumphrey: Another little bug I've noticed on the 3700...

When I press mute on the remote, the screen pauses briefly.

I believe it behaves like this only if the bitstream setting is set to on. If you set bitstream to off, mute should be smooth.

CraigHumphrey

61 posts

Master Geek

#526249 27-Sep-2011 15:27

wklie:
CraigHumphrey: Another little bug I've noticed on the 3700...

When I press mute on the remote, the screen pauses briefly.

I believe it behaves like this only if the bitstream setting is set to on. If you set bitstream to off, mute should be smooth.

Thanks! How odd... for now I'll turn bitstream off (it's only going into my 2.0 TV anyway), but that's going to be slightly annoying when I run the HDMI through an amp...

lorenzo

91 posts

Master Geek

#526276 27-Sep-2011 15:57

nigelb999: Has anyone noticed channel lockout during recordings? Last night I was recording two channels at the same time, TV1 and MTV, while I was watching TV2... when I went to change channels to TV3 or TV4 it said "Recording in progress. Can't change to that channel.". Maybe I'm missing something here, but that doesn't make sense to me. I was already watching a non-recording channel (TV2) so why wouldn't it let me swap to another non-recording channel (TV3)? Can anyone please explain this? Thanks.

It does this on the 3600 too. The box has 2 tuners, there is a more technical discussion on this in the 3600 thread, but basically the TV in NZ is broadcast on three different MUXs and as such to watch and record programmes being broadcast simultaneously on all three MUXs would require more than 2 tuners.

Depending on the channels selected for recording determines whether you can watch a third channel at the same time. Have a look at the 3600 thread (search for Kordia) and you will find the discussion.

EDIT : http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=83&topicid=43120&page_no=9 here this will save you search time.

Jimmy22

377 posts

Ultimate Geek

#526836 28-Sep-2011 16:25

MTV 3700 power consumption from the importer "Running is 13w and low power standby is below 1w . Our power meter reads 0 " Not bad at all !!! :)

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