Thread: Visionsat IV200 PVR Plus

Well I tried to get it to work with a HDD...here is what happened

I went and purchased a Maxtor 320GB HD. Got it home and hooked it up to the receiver. Got it to recognize it and tried to format it. Box whirled for a minute or so then "Format Failed". OK

So I know you can format it on the computer then transport it to the receiver. You have to format it in a "fat32format". SO I downloaded the file to allow it to do that and formatted the HDD via the computer. System showed approx 319 GB

So I hooked it back up and it recognized it. Hit record and it showed 0:00:00 and 1:00:00...huh? The first number didnt move. So I let it record for a minute or so and hit stop

and the box froze.....grrrr....reboot with switch on back. Hit eject and the program is there but 0KB...hmmm

so I try to reformat...and it failed. DId some reading and found out the HDD is incompatible with the receiver. I read what drives are and it sounds like Western Digital is the big one and seagate is another.....

Then I found the bad news (for me at least)...when you record something it saves it as 2 hours max per file. So If you have a 3 hour ball game its 2 files.



I'll keep my box hooked up to the DVD recorder/HDD box I already have
It would work great for shows up to 2 hours but I record too many hockey games and I can't afford to have it on 2 files.....I probably will try a WD hard drive one of these days (have to see what's on sale)

the file limitation is a fat32 limitation.. 4 gigs per file max if I remember correctly.. they just cut it in half probably to save on performance and just in case it accidentally goes over 2 gigs size on a 2 hour recording

Box sounds good though I'm waiting on a DVB-S2 box/pci card (preferably with blindscan).. I was hunting some euro sites (since they are plenterful over there).. nothing worth getting for the price yet..

oh ok...did not know that is why the limitation

have you tried playing the files on the pc with VLC?

no. I don't trust my computer. Its pokey and doesn't have much for memory....half the time it bogs down while playing a media file. (not enough memory)

I've been using ubuntu linux lately and it has VLC (if I'm not mistaken it was a linux app originally) and runs well on pcs that windows performs poorly on.. latest version read/writes fat32 & ntfs

Originally Posted by digiblur

have you tried playing the files on the pc with VLC?

Ice,

would you mind sharing a small file for others to try?

Another thing I'd like to know is if it records the raw TS. While the box may not have the horsepower to handle 4.2.2 or HD feeds, I wonder if it will still record the raw feed to be playable via a PC.

Originally Posted by scottc98

Another thing I'd like to know is if it records the raw TS. While the box may not have the horsepower to handle 4.2.2 or HD feeds, I wonder if it will still record the raw feed to be playable via a PC.

Oh! Great Scott, he's got a fine idea!
Not likely a hope in hell, but sure worth a try!

Update:

All HDD type units will be supported by the next factory firmware release. This should be available in the next week.

To clarify: programming will play back on the receiver as one program irregardless of the length of recording. The split files are only an issue if ripping or viewing the file with an external player. Many software applications will stitch multiple files together for single file formatting and playback. We have also requested to see if the individual file size could be increased to the maximum FAT32 format.

Additional satellites and transponders will be added in the next release for viewing satellite serving North America from the Atlantic and Europe.