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HDD for BM7000 recommendations please

J

jimshrapnel

Newbie
I'm looking at buying a HDD and was wondering which drives people are using and how they rate them in performance when used with the BM7000. I want one that doesn't need a power supply (power from USB).

The reason I'm asking this is because I used to have an iTgate box on cable and didn't have much success when using a HDD.

Also, how many hours per GB do you get when recording HD?

Thanks
 
i use a 500gb sata usb hdd, its usb self powered from the blade box. works fine for me, had no problems.
2/3 hours hd recording is about 10gb
2/3 hours non hd recording is about 2gb

you'll need to format the hard drive in fat32 for it to work
 
GerrardLFC said:
i use a 500gb sata usb hdd, its usb self powered from the blade box. works fine for me, had no problems.
2/3 hours hd recording is about 10gb
2/3 hours non hd recording is about 2gb

you'll need to format the hard drive in fat32 for it to work
Click to expand...

Just for my curiousty, what is the recording like on the Blade?

Are you able to pause and resume recording so you can skip commericals and still have the Blade save the "show" to the same file instead of splitting it?

Also what file format is the recording encoded in? i.e. avi/mp4.

Also another thing. You say that you have to format the HDD to fat32 which would mean not being able to transfer more than 4GB to one file at any given time. How did you get the 10GB recordings to fit on your hard drive at 10GB? Unless you have been recording multiple shows that are being saved to there own file and are under 4GB in filesize?

Cheers. :)

and yeah (sorry lol) Have you tried playing the recording on your PC? any glitches or out of syncs? :)
 
1: Recording Quality is excellent m8, cant complain at all, no stuttering at all, crystal clear on mine.

2: Unfortunately you cant pause recording, so i record the commercials, that way i end up with just ONE file. But of course the recorded file can be skipped forward and backward after.

3: Im not sure about the file format m8, not checkd, but I tried playing a recorded film on my PC and it didnt work unfortunately, as i've tried Media Player, Real Player, Nero, DVD Player...lol

4: The Blade only reads FAT32 , so I formatted my 500GB Hard Drive in FAT32 using the DOS command, but you can also use 3rd party software like "Fat32formatter" which is alot easier, it lets u do Quick & Full formatt.

hope your satisfied with my answers buddy lol
 
Just ordered a 320GB 2.5" HDD which should be with me tomorrow so will have a play around with it and let you know what I think.
 
I've been using my new Freecom 320GB HDD for a few days now and the recording seems spot the only problem I'm having is when I pause live TV and then resume watching it the pitcure intermittently freezes, the audio keeps playing and the video after a shortwhile catches up again. So it seems when it's reading and writing the playback performance suffers.

Does anyone else have this issue, if not what make and model HDD are you using?

Cheers
 
Hi all

I use a Buffalo Ministation 1TB USB 2.0 Slimline Portable External Hard Drive -
PC and Mac compatible
Plug-n-Play - ready for immediate use
USB Powered - no power supply needed
Sleek, compact and lightweight in a black slim line chassis
i used the same hdd on other boxes and now it's used on the blade box, it's a fantastic little hdd for the price and loads of space for hd recording as the average movie in hd recording is 8 gig.

Item Weight: 163 g
Boxed-product Weight: 281 g
Item model number: HD-PC1TU2/BB-EU
ASIN: B004KSRM18
 
Cheers for the info mate, I've just ordered a 500GB Seagate and I'm hoping it won't have the freezing issues when watching and recording at the same time. I'm sending back the freecom one back because as soon as you move it slightly it disconnects.

---------- Post added at 10:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:10 AM ----------
dan-ger-ous said:
Also what file format is the recording encoded in? i.e. avi/mp4.

Also another thing. You say that you have to format the HDD to fat32 which would mean not being able to transfer more than 4GB to one file at any given time. How did you get the 10GB recordings to fit on your hard drive at 10GB? Unless you have been recording multiple shows that are being saved to there own file and are under 4GB in filesize?

Cheers. :)

and yeah (sorry lol) Have you tried playing the recording on your PC? any glitches or out of syncs? :)
Click to expand...

The file format is .trp which can be played using media player classic and the quality is spot on and in synch. I think this is an mpeg4 format so could probably be converted to something else. The files are split and I think named with .001, .002 extensions so I'm sure these could be joined for larger recordings.
 
jimshrapnel said:
Cheers for the info mate, I've just ordered a 500GB Seagate and I'm hoping it won't have the freezing issues when watching and recording at the same time. I'm sending back the freecom one back because as soon as you move it slightly it disconnects.

---------- Post added at 10:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:10 AM ----------



The file format is .trp which can be played using media player classic and the quality is spot on and in synch. I think this is an mpeg4 format so could probably be converted to something else. The files are split and I think named with .001, .002 extensions so I'm sure these could be joined for larger recordings.
Click to expand...

Awesome. :) Yeah I guess it would need encoding. As far as I know, recordings on boxes like these take the stream that is being used to broadcast the channel via satellite. I sometimes find recording different channels on my dreambox leads to a bigger filesize for some channels, and some channels have a different ratio compared to others, and ofcourse sometimes the quality is different between channels, but I know this isn't an issue with the Blade, just an observation I have made. :)
 
I've just recently bought a Blade and I'm having hard drive problems also.

I've tried two 3.5" USB 2.0 drives and one 2.5" USB 2.0 and time shift with HD content basically doesn't work. If you pause it and then play then it jumps and stutters and is unwatchable. All of these drives work fine with SD content it's just the HD I have problems with.

The drives I've tried are:
Freecom 2.5" 250GB Model number has rubbed off.
Iomega GDHDU 1tb
WD Mybook WDBAAF0020HBK - Also had other problems with this due to the built in WD software.

So if anyone does have details of good drives to use with the Blade I'd be very grateful if they'd share.

Cheers
 
Interesting, I haven't tried using timeshift on SD. I've only tried on HD and get the stuttering/freezing issue. I'll hopefully have a new seagate 2.5" delivered tomorrow so will let you know how it performs.
 
Right....seems better than the freecom I sent back but still stuttering when using timeshift on all S!y Sports HD, S!y 1 HD & Atlantic HD channels. It is fine on all other channels including S!y HD movie channels. So it seems to be suffering on broadcasts with higher bitrates (I'm guessing) as it is fine on all others.

The HDD I'm using is a Seagate Expansion 5400rpm 2.5" part number : ST905004EXD101-RK

I'm thinking of buying a 7200rpm SATA 3Gbps drive and putting it in a caddy as it might handle the higher I/O demands of the higher bitrate channels. Anyone else using this kind of setup?

Has anyone else noticed these kind of performance issues when using timeshift on these HD channels?
 
There has to be someone else who has tried recording HD?

I've only tried on the sports channels, I'll try my luck with other HD channels and update as to how I get on.

---------- Post added at 05:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:00 PM ----------

Well after some investigation I've found that quality of playback of HD recordings depends on which channel I am watching before I enter the "File list". Ie. My HD recordings are jumpy if I press "file list" when watching an HD channel but if I switch to a SD channel then press "file list" they play flawlessly. This worked with sports and non sports channels/recordings.

So I'm assuming that even when watching a recording the Blade is still decoding the channel that was previously being watched and HDx2 is too much of a drain.

I was thinking of buying a 7200rpm drive also but it would be good to know if it's worthwile first. (y)

---------- Post added at 05:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:22 PM ----------

Further update:

If I turn off "auto timeshift" then all HD recordings play fine whatever I am watching. So basically it seems with the HDD I have you cannot play and record HD content at the same time.
 
Last edited:
Just ordered a 7200rpm SATA II 16MB cache HDD and a caddy which should be here on Monday so I'll let you know how it performs....If this doesn't do it I don't know what will!
 
Just incase anyone else has been experiencing performance issues when using timeshift on HD channels I've managed to get mine working perfectly. I bought a WD Scorpio Black 500 GB SATA Hard Drives (WD5000BPKT) SATA 3Gbps 16MB Cache and used this with an Icy Box Caddy, this still stuttered when using timeshift on some HD channels but I had the video format set to 1080p in the menu on the Blade, I changed this to 1080i and it worked perfectly.

So if you're having issues with timeshift check the video format first before you go trying different HDD's like I did.
 
Legend! Nice one Jim!

Switching to 1080i fixed all my problems also. Glad we finally got there! Can wholehartedly recommend the Blade now.
 
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