Thread: Diamond 9000HD PVR Review

Originally Posted by anik

Now that I've had the Diamond for a while it seems to have developed a new problem - if I try to record a true HD signal from the satellite (I won't mention which in this forum, but let's just say there are a couple feeds on C-Band that are probably not intended for us to watch), not only is the recording complete trash but if you try to watch the program as you are recording it, even the live signal you're viewing will skip (have audio gaps and picture freezes). Stop recording and the signal becomes viewable again.

I'm not sure if this has always been the case because I hadn't paid that much attention to either of these channels at first. Not every HD signal has done this, I am certain that I've been able to successfully record HD off of certain other channels (and always off terrestrial stations). I suspect that if it may have something to do with how the signal is compressed, or something of that nature.

Anyway, I'm guessing the Diamond is very underpowered in the CPU department for decoding true HD. It does just great on standard definition but you are pushing the box to the limit if you try to record HD.

That would be correct, IMO. Anything over 20000 S/R, PVR is useless. Which is why I don't even use the PVR. Saves more gray hairs.

Just thought I'd let you know, I discovered this partly by accident. What happened was I was playing a recorded show and trying to fast forward through a commercial, and the wonderful(?) Diamond instead shut down (as happens more frequently than I would like). When I powered back up, something was corrupted about the file (I think an index file had been zeroed out or something) and although the recording was still there, the Diamond wouldn't play it. Worse yet, it reported the drive as being corrupted (or something to that effect), although I could still record shows, and could still play back anything previously recorded except that one show.

Anyway, I finally decided to reformat the hard drive, but before I did, I copied the one program that would not play off onto my computer. This basically involves copying all the files with the same root name (only the extension different) to a single directory (note you may have to change Finder's preferences to show file extensions). I then reformatted the external hard drive that I use with the Diamond, first doing so on my Mac (using Fat32 format) and then again on the Diamond. After that, the Diamond no longer complained about the drive.

However I still could not figure out if the program could be recovered, until the other night I spotted an article that made me try something. There is a program called
MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac OS X

and it can be downloaded for free. You simply use the program's File menu to open the file with the .trp extension (it will likely be the only one not grayed out, if you copied all the files for the show in question to a single directory). If you get a message saying that the Apple QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component is not installed, just continue, because you don't need that for this operation. Then, also under the File menu, you use "Convert to MPEG" to save the file as an MPEG file. If it won't play using a native Mac program (such as QuickTime, which may complain that it's "not a movie file") then try another player such as VLC. If it doesn't convert the entire program (look at the "Out" time and see if it's a realistic length) then you may have to take extraordinary measures, like concatenating all the files with numbered extensions (.001, .002, etc.) into one huge file, then processing just that one file rather than the .trp file (note, you'll probably have to set the dropdown to show "All Files" so your concatenated file isn't grayed out).

This is not a perfect process nor would very many folks consider it easy, but it can be attempted, and it might let you view the rest of the program (on your computer) if the Diamond corrupted the .idx file and won't play the program. As long as all the files with numbered extensions are intact, you should (hopefully) be able to recover the show.

I'm guessing there's probably software that will do this in Windows also, but I have no idea what it is offhand. But I just wanted to mention this for the Mac users out there, so you don't miss an episode of your favorite show because the Diamond flaked out on you while you were trying to skip through a commercial break.