Learning with the Fang

OK, it has been a week since I purchased my Topfield TF7000HDPVRt – which is a box that contains two HD TV tuners and a hard disk for recording television programmes.  Here is a list of the things I can and cant do with the box followed by geeky notes on how I got to where I am.  Be warned, getting value from these boxes (and understanding this blog post) is not for the faint-hearted.

I can: (as of September 26, 2007)

• Enjoy beautiful sound thru my VAF speakers and fancy A/V reciever
• Push my old TV to is picture quality limit (1080i at 16:9 widescreen)
• Pause live TV and record one show while watching another
• Record shows by selecting them from the guide (EPG) that updates from IceTV
• Organise recorded shows into folders, make and save bookmarks, even edit bits out
• Move/Copy recorded shows to an external USB Hard Disk
• Edit shows taken from the external Hard Disk on my computer
• Play .mp3 audio files from external USB storage
• wish I paid a couple of hundred bucks less ($1100 is well over the street price)

I can’t:

• Get files from my computer (back) to the TF7000HDPVRt
• Copy/Move small edited sections of a long show to the external Hard Disk
• Talk directly to the unit over USB (like the MPEG Streamclip.app / TF5000)

WARNING: the rest of this post is extremely geeky and in note form.  Intended to help me (and other geeks) get the most out of their purchase.

Some facts in semi-sequential order.

Auto tune to all local TV stations worked a treat.  Make sure date / time / timezone are correct.

Audio mode to PCM so my A/V reciever does the right thing with fancy audio.

Upgrade firmware from v0.95.02 to v1.00.00 (16/9/2007) – the external USB storage and IceTV USB update didnt’ work with the firmware that shipped on the unit.  Download more detailed .pdf manual from here.

Attach external Hard Disk – not trivial.  The trick is to make sure the drive is initialized but has no partitions.  Then let menu->installation->format external storage have its way with the entire disk.  If the drive has a partition or is not initialised you will get the very helpful error message ‘Cannot found USB media’.  Using windowsxp mycomputer->manage->disk management to delete all partitions from the USB disk drive worked for me.  You now have a USB2 drive formatted for Unix ExtFS file system – unless you are running linux (like the topfield does) you will need some software to enable your PC or Mac to read the drive when you plug it in via USB2.0.  I use ext2fs for OSX (10.3) on my mac (but I have to boot from a special (older than OSX10.4 – tiger) boot disk.

Collect /  purchase utility software.   Purchase Apple QuickTimeMPEG2 playback from apple store ($30aud).  Purchase visualhub serial number ($US 23).  Download MPEG_Streamclip_1.8.dmg and ext2filesystemv1-3.  I already own Quicktime Pro (which is the only way I could find to convert video to .3gp for my nokia N80 phone).

How I:

• Record shows by selecting them from the guide (EPG) that updates from IceTV

Using the special offer card included in the box, sign up for a free IceTV (3month) subscription and login to their site.  Scratch around for THIS URL which allows download of a .txt file to a /ice folder on USB memory stick.  Take that USB stick to the TF7000HDPVRt, press ‘guide’ button on remote then hit the white button to initiate update.  Since topfield decided not to include network (internet) access with this model, you need to update via USB each week or so.  To record a show, find it via the Guide button on the remote, then press enter twice to mark and record it.  Hint: menu->system setting->PVR setting to add 10minutes or so ‘Time Padding’ to the end of each scheduled recording – I found that many shows start late and finish late.

• Edit shows taken from the external Hard Disk on my computer

<<<THIS SECTION NEEDS WORK: copy move to external HD [this can take a long time for files over about 10gig], boot mac to osx 10.3 with ext2fs installed, use MPEG_Streamclip_1.8.dmg [requires apple QuickTimeMPEG2.dmg purchase] to mark in/out points, chop out ads etc, save as TS, virtualhub to take one or more TS files and output to whatever I want [e.g. DVD, quicktime for imovie, .mp4 (then QuickTimePro for .3gp to phone] >>>  Note: this particular workflow is the best so far – with the only outstanding problem being garbled audio from some recordings of HD shows that air with fancy audio such as [paste here: 672 AC3 2/0, 48 kHz, 448 kbps  ]  Previous problems like out of sync audio (like 2-3 seconds out from the start of a clip – after an audible blip, blip sound) are avoided using this workflow.  Other benefits include good handling of very large files by MPEG_Streamclip, and fast convert to TS – meaning a pretty fluid process for trimming large files.  The slow stuff (like re-encoding) is handled nicely, in batch, with no UI intervention by VisualHub.  (tho it always pays to make a 5-10 sec clip pass thru the whole process first to make sure the end result plays as expected (ie audio in sync and correct aspect ratio).

I’m stuck:

• Get files from my computer (back) to the TF7000HDPVRt

Useful Links:

• del.icio.us/mseyfang/topfield

more coming soon, this is taking way longer than I had planned…

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:topfield, pvr, tf7000hdpvrt, tf5000, tf7000