The New EuroVox PVR

LOL very true, they dont come under the "anybody" clause, believe me I also know.

 

Hi all!!
Haven't yet received my initial stock of Eurovox PVR's yet so I'm still pretty much in the dark. A quick question or two concerning the HDD. Has anyone fitted a bigger-than-120Gb drive? Does a bigger drive work OK? Does the drive need to be formatted before connection, and what file-system?

TIA

Peter

 

Hi Peter,

You could go as high as 500Gb, but that is far from recommended. Some people are having problems with the HDD as some don't even fit. The manufacturers have recommended these two models:

Seagate Momentus 5400 - 80g and Seagate Momentus 7200 - 80g.

There will be a new firmware released today to change the time slip button from play button to pause button, just makes more sense. I know before you say it that the latest firmware was only released on 08/07/08, but this is only a minor adjustment.

 

Thanks as always for the fast response Scouse!! Just got first batch deliverd 10 mins ago - can you give me some info on HDD file system - I have a 250Gb here that is formatted NTFS, will I need to change it to FAT32?

P

 

Will do but people are coming at me with conflicting info, so quite hard to see the woods from the trees.

250 GB is quite big in regards to recommended size. Although try it by all means, but have been speaking to people and it could lead to a higher current drain. Please try it with the HDD installed flash it and see how it runs or not.

What manufacturer is you HDD some have clips around the IDE and wont fit.

 

Tried a 250Gb HDD - formatted NTFS and FAT32 - box wont come out of standby!!

P

 

Guessed as much. Have you tried a flash without HDD.

 

I flashed the unit without HDD fitted. just phoned my component supplier to courier me a 120Gb HDD asap. I'd like to know if the drive needs to be formatted before fitting and what file system!
Any ideas Scouse?

P

 

Shouldnt need to be I just slotted mine in, but as said there are others like yourself with problems. The two models I said above will work though and 80Gbs is also recommended.

 

I'll report further when the new HDD arrives later this afternoon - thanks for the input!!

Peter

 

120Gb HDD arrived and box is working perfectly - you were correct - no HDD format is required!!

Cheers

Peter

 

Yep What manufacturer is the HDD, mine is a Samsung 120GB IDE.

 

Seagate Momentus
P

 

As recommended very good. Having messed about it wont take anything bigger than above 160GB and even at 160 is pushing it. Windows will not recognise the recordings as it uses a different file system. So still a few things to iron out I think.

 

I notice that reviews have appeared on several forums stating that HDD up to 500Gig have been tested and that files can be read on a PC. It seems this isn't the case.

Having tried 3 different makes of 160Gig and 250Gig drives, the box won't initialize with them installed, so either the firmware has been significantly altered or the reviews weren't accurate.

I would advise people not to buy a HDD bigger than 120Gig, also don't get a Fujitsu or Hitachi as they may not physically fit.

 

Lads if this box only has one tuner does that mean you can only record the program/channel you are watching?

Thanks

 

You can watch other channels but only on the same TP.

 

Thanks for dropping by lincsat. Yes I have also noticed this but they are quick enough to come up with 1.1 I know it was only a button fix for timeslip but shows firmware is still at early stage.

Although as you say they should have thought about different IDE types. Hopefully as said people will now know which manufacturer and model type suit best.

 

Hi Guys,

This is the type of problem I face almost everyday, so maybe I can help out around here for once. )

Most reveiwers only try what they have handy...
So when they reveiwed this box they would use what ever 2.5" they were given or happen to have. When it works, they don't bother going out and getting another to re-test it. They'll look on-line find the biggest version they can and then assume that will work.

Manufactures tend to go with the easist options...
So with Seagate now being the largest Hard Drive maker in the world, the chances are pretty good thats the type of HDD people will end up using.

There is [or for PC's was] a 158GB limit, on alot of BIOS [EPPROM] chips. While this is no longer a problem for PC's as the technolgy has moved on. Theres are plenty of other equipment out there, that is starting to hit this limit. Early HDD Freeview Boxes and the old black Xbox are classic examples.

As I said in another post, heat being a reason for only using 120GB HDD didn't make sence. But from what lincsat and papaq have said I think its more likely a BIOS limit.

@sc0user,
Can you tell me what file type the recored files are ?
Or better still pass me a 20/30 second recording to mess around with.
I won't be able to get one of these till atleast next month. {

 

Having spoken to the reviewer, he's confirmed that the review was based on early beta firmware which as I suspected was significantly different to the current release.

My advice on HDD stands for the time being, hopefully a future Firmware update will allow the box to initialize with a larger HDD even if it doesn't use the full capacity - maybe they can map a remote button to fix the Audio description problem.