Good news and bad news on the 8320HD front this month. First up, ShopTo.net have bought FetchTV (who were previously the brand owned by IP Vision), which may hopefully mean the survival of some of FetchTV's services, particularly those related to 8320HD's online functionality. Don't get your hopes up for any future 8320HD firmware updates though - I suspect that ship has long since sailed and left us with a sadly buggy shipwreck on the shore.
Second up, hope that 8320HD online services would be kept intact after the buy-out immediately took a blow as reports are emerging that Sky Go on the 8320HD will cease on 16th May 2012. Whilst I never cared for it when I had a one month free trial, I'm more worried that iPlayer on the 8320HD might suffer the same fate - I use it to watch Click at the weekends.
Finally, I'm announcing that my next recorder setup will not be a consumer unit like the 8320HD. Instead, I'm setting up a Linux PC solution that will blow the 8320HD away in time for the 2012 Olympics. Would you trust the 8320HD to timer record the 100m final properly? No, me neither! Read up on my preparations at my new Olymprecs blog...
Firesale of all the returned 8320HD's on Tesco Ebay site.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TECHNIKA-8320HD-SMARTBOX-320GB-HARD-DRIVE-FREEVIEW-HD-DIGITAL-RECORDER-C-GRADE-/280936693942?pt=UK_AudioElectronicsVideo_Video_TelevisionSetTopBoxes&hash=item416921c0b6
I bagged one for £52, working fine at the moment.
DeleteNot a bad buy if you're willing to put up with the firmware bugs, the most annoying of which is the repeat of the previous remote control action instead of obeying the latest remote control button you pressed.
DeleteHowever, now I've moved to a Linux-based media centre solution, I have a lot more flexibility (and a lot less bugs!) than the 8320HD such as:
* Being able to record terrestrially or satellite from the same machine (there's nothing out there as a set-top box that can do that as far as I can tell).
* Being able to record all the channels on the same multiplex/transponder simultaneously (and with 2 terrestrial tuners and 4 sat tuners, the number of simul channels can get high!).
* Writing recordings to SSD and then copying them, if needed, to HDD later. This is needed if you are recording a lot of simul channels.
* Recordings are normal unencrypted MPEG2 (SD) or MPEG4 (HD) .mkv files that can be copied anywhere you like.
* Can burn recordings to DVD if I want on the same machine I recorded them on.
* Can use keyboard, mouse, any remote control and even an Android phone (XBMC Remote) to control the UI.
* Can Web browse, play games etc. whilst recording.
* Can download a 14-day EPG (XML TV) and then specify programme substrings to automatically record (so no manual EPG programming needed). Was handy for Olympics - just record everything with "Olympics" in the title :-)
* Slick Web interface for configuration (that was something the 8320HD barely thought about - all you got was a set of .ts file links, which were encrypted if HD as well!).
Whilst the 8320HD was great a couple of years ago, I'm afraid its lack of fixes for the firmware and the failure to launch the new UI they promised for years means it's a bit of a dud if you ask me.
Now that the Fetch site is down, any ideas on where I can find a manual for my box (I took the plunge and bought one off Tesco)
ReplyDeleteThis is a url for the manual http://tinyurl.com/fetchtvsept2010
ReplyDeleteTo get encryption free HD recordings downgrade firmware to 4.7.48-19.
ReplyDeleteBe warned that 4.7.48-19 is an early firmware release (from Jul 2010) that, whilst you can export HD recordings unencrypted, has a large number of bugs that make it nearly unusable in the long term. I would advise waiting until your 8320HD drive is almost full, downgrade to that release, export all your HD recordings and then upgrade back to the latest release. You can then remove all the exported HD recordings from the 8320HD.
DeleteThis is one of the biggest complaints I have about the Freeview HD standard - the insistence that to qualify for Freeview HD certification, you either have to ban HD exporting or export HD encrypted. Considering there are no such restrictions on SD recordings (whch only differ on resolution, not copyrighted content), this is horribly inconsistent.
It's one of the many reasons I moved away from a Freeview HD recorder to a Linux media centre solution - I can record SD or HD with no export restrictions at all.
Thanks for the warning, not really found any bugs yet apart from the series link not working. I would be interested in knowing what this bugs are please ?
DeleteI have found an issue with the latest firmware which records other channel fragments on ts files - box plays ok but it screws up when playing thru vlc over the network.
I think it is the copyright flag on the data stream which enables the export restrictions. BBC have occasionally set this by mistake on SD movies making them unexportable too.