Sony DHG-HDD250/500: Official Thread - Page 884

Nothing, but if you are curious, check page two under HDD to see how many hours are on your drive.

Power on Hours: Value (31) Raw Value(50669)...

There seems to be a wealth of knowledge on this post about our DVR's, maybe somebody will figure a way to get the listing to the unit!

I use my old Panasonic DVD recorder for dubbing from the DHG's component video outputs. But when the day comes, I'd like to keep it all digital with a TiVo. What software do you use to decrypt the TiVo files? (assuming they are not just MPEG...)

- Kerry

I think tivodecode is the program. Check Google for kmttg.

Sorry, but that's like claiming that if someone can find the cigarette lighter in a car, that they automatically/always know how to replace the piston rings.

They are just MPEG-2 encoded files and they are not really "encrypted" -- they are encased in a TiVo wrapper that has all the meta-data for the recording (i.e. guide data). If you strip away the TiVo wrapper what you are left with is a standard MPG file. Software like kmttg can read a group of .tivo files, strip off the wrapper and write the underlying .mpg file back to disk just about as fast as a file copy operation. Editing software like Video ReDo use the TiVodecode module in TiVo Desktop to open .tivo files directly while preserving the wrapper. That way after you have edited out the commercials you can save the file as a .tivo with the wrapper and all the meta-data in place so when you transfer it back to the TiVo it has full functionality -- the listed runtime even reflects the removal of the commercials and any other trimming.
Edited by Kelson - 1/23/13 at 10:02am

Same goes for the firmware. Just because you can download a binary firmware update file doesn't mean you know squat about the underlying source code. Comments like "the Open Source community could probably figure this out in a weekend" just make me laugh -- especially when they are preceded by "It's over my head, as I'm not a hardware (driver) guy, but . . . "

Exactly. We've identified the chips and made some inferences, but the platform is hardly "well understood", particularly at the software level. It's possible in theory to get something like MythTV running on this hardware, but this would require a lot of reverse-engineering work by skilled engineers, and even after doing all that, you'd still have a single-tuner DVR that uses IDE hard drives and consumes over twice as much power as a TiVo Premiere or Mac Mini with USB tuner(s)--either of which you could have up and running in a matter of hours--which is why I decided not to pursue the project. Using the existing Linux-based firmware as a starting point might be possible, but I'm not aware of anyone even doing the preliminary work on that, such as dumping the contents of the flash (which contains the bootloader and main firmware). If you wanted to distribute a DHG-to-MythTV update to others without requiring them to have specialized equipment to install it, you'd have to also figure out Sony's private key to digitally sign your new update so that unmodified units would accept it. There are some serious hurdles.

Kind of like the serial port. A diag screen shows constant data flow and the hardware thread even has the pinouts. I never heard of someone connecting a DB9 or DB25 and using a terminal to see what happens. I have been tempted, but not enough to invest the time & money. Should I start a rumor that you can set the clock using a terminal?

 

Wow, you really do exaggerate a lot. Every recorder out there with TVGOS except for this one has a way to set the clock manually, and manual timers can be set in the absence of a TVGOS signal.

 

Rovi's not responsible for that design fault in the Sony. They've hardly "ruined" all the TVGOS recorders.

Edited by Rammitinski - 1/23/13 at 12:25pm

I'll tell you how I'm going to do it. As soon as the guide stops I'm pulling out all the boards and putting in a DH61AG thin mini, 4 tuners, new drives, and maybe a VFD supported by windows. Then run media center.

I'll vote for that too. If Sony can do a manual shutoff it can do a manual clock set. Rovi may be cruel and make us feel bad, but Sony built this fine box and designed the base firmware.

I'm not sure why my question was an invitation to a slagging off. I'm a software programmer, my point in saying I'm not a hardware guy is that I don't know the inherent difficulties in this specific piece of hardware, such as what dp70 alludes to...

My perspective is that I have the hardware now, it's worked admirably, and I don't see any particular need to invest in another piece of hardware to support the < 5 hours per week I spend watching OTA/cable TV anyway. Netflix gets much of my time so were I to invest, it'd be all on that end, and I'm happy with my current setup.

BUT, if somebody had done the legwork already, I'd be interested in flashing to a new firmware, or even putting in the work coding if project reached a stage that it entered my area of expertise. The irony is, of all the devices I've acquired in the past 10 years, the HDD500 is one of the very few that has worked well enough out of the box that, evidently, nobody's cracked the thing and posted alternatives on the net. I speak as one who spends most of his non-Netflix media time either watching videos on my WDTV, iPad, or Nook. These are all devices that I could flash to a custom OS had I the inkling (again). Like dp70 said, it's a question of time, and as the device has worked up until now, barring the nightmarish months some years ago with the DTV switch, nobody's invested the time. *Sigh*.

Though, I thought that as a GNU-licensed device, the source was available somewhere? Oh well, I'm off to continue my investigation of HTPC.

Anyone else notice if TVGOS is gone from NYC?

thanks

That has been posted here for the last few weeks.

Yep, my TV Guide disappeared about 10 days ago in NYC. I was able to manually record on the DHG until Monday, when it spontaneously rebooted, and changed the time to an hour earlier than real time. When I'm home, I hear the tuner click on and off repeatedly, as though it's searching for a host channel or attempting to acquire data. I'm surprised that at this point in time,
stations like CBS or PBS do not provide some sort of clock signal either through OTA or the cable line. Very disappointing.

WCBS has removed their inserter so no data is being transmitted OTA.

I was thinking about your reply, and it seems to me that your date and time after the power was removed reverted back to day one, out of the box! Like a format.slash total TVGOS reset. Hve you done a total reset after the loss of the TVGOS signal?

Errr, no. My other DHG that was unplugged for over a month came up with a full grid. I'm letting my test unit run overnight. I already answered the lineup question about two hours ago and have full setup bits. If it does this again I will pull it and try a different unit. This is the first time I had a power removal do a complete wipe. I guess anything is possible. Cosmic rays.

I haven't loss my TVGOS. I just remove the rf for testing.

I was just thinking, a total format/reset of the unit brings it back to out of the box factory/12:00AM 1990 waiting for the time signal to correct date and time. In my case my unit was stuck on 4:24 AM cause I must have had a power failure and the clock kept that time as its starting off point till it would get the time signal to correct it's time!. So if I pulled the plug dollars to donuts that the time would still be 4:24AM and I could get the time on time if I turned the unit back on at 4:24 AM!..

If you have no time offset and no clock set channel the time could be 1/1/90 or 1/1/04 under various circumstances. Having all the bits set and fully working unit, a power interruption will usually produce a semi-random time. I have seen 4:24am also. If I had the source code I could tell you why. I pulled power at 8:10am, tomorrow I will pick a different time and hope it doesn't lose everything again.

I'll check back later! But if I lose power I will get the 4 dashes this I know! So I will then do a front panel reset and see what happens, and I power up again after the 4 dashes show up! I'll check back later!

One of mine had been unplugged since January 2012, and when I plugged it in on Jan 13, 2013 it had a full grid and (old) listings. I've since reset it . . .

The front panel is a funny thing. It sometimes shows time after a power cycle if all the bits are set. If data is present it shows the correct time in under a minute if the offset is valid. I don't use it much. The guide clock is more reliable. Tomorrow.

For the record, I've lost the grid a few times just by pulling the plug. The last time was a couple of weeks ago.

Mark

So, time for another reset, at midnight on a Thursday.  And so I did, last Thursday at 12:00am.

 

And there it is... The date and Guide Clock was set to 1/1/04 12:00am.  Now I have the clock and days of

the week in sync.   So now, I am doing manual, scheduled recordings.

 

However, if there is a power glitch/outage or lockup... I will have to do another 12AM Thursday

reset, I suppose.  I captured my Scheduled Recordings with my cellphone camera for future reentry. 

 

Maybe one day I will hookup a UPS.  However, some sort of lockup will eventually take place.

 

To help reduce lockups, I try not to be in any menu or be playing any program while a recording

is either about to start or end. (This is where most of the lockups have happened, though it has

happened a few times when I was not near the unit... but it hasn't done that for months now.)

 

Strange, but when I do the “753 159 852” thing, it eventually shows the correct date/time, but not when

scheduling a manual recording (It still shows '2004').  Different clock? (Edit: Yes.)

 

I notice that the Clock/Fail Clock channels listed is 0:41-0.  Is that a 41 or 41.1 OTA channel?

 

No Host Channel listed.

Edited by CleCakYngMfd - 2/1/13 at 8:16pm

Very interesting and as I suspected 12AM on some units! The question is!
1. have you on the TV Guide screen gone to setup down to change channel display?
2 Used the channel editor to find your channel lineup (if available) if off turned them on?

I believe 1/1/90 at 00:00:00 will always happen doing a Sony full reset. A TVGOS full reset usually gets you the 1/1/04 date. Check the dates in your reset log. BTW, that log is usually wiped when doing a Sony reset or HDD format but not with a TVGOS reset. A power failure (when you have data) is shown as 0x7000. An update to TVGOS is 0x102 and there will always be two if you have the data. Other numbers are unknown but it's a good place to look after something unusual happens, like a spontaneous reset.

The lack of "absolutes" is intentional and all times are UTC.

No host channel display is normal for .21 firmware and a digital host. A channel that starts with 0: is OTA, cable starts with 1:. OTA channel 41 is 41 or 41.1, both are the same. Is that a valid channel for your location?

PBS stations were the first to lose TVGOS on Nov. 1. If your host was WVIZ it probably no longer has a TVGOS inserter.
Edited by JoeKustra - 1/24/13 at 5:26am