The Strawberry Project

Had an email update from Humax the other day regarding the next 9200T software update:

We have recently been inundated with requests for information about upgrading the PVR9200T/TB/TS for Freeview Playback 2. We had hoped to send an over the air download (OAD) that included Accurate Recording and Series Recording in time for Christmas, but due to the last minute changes required this has not been possible. Although we are currently shipping this version of the software with the new PVR9200TBX we are currently finalising the software for the OAD version. This should be completed in the next 2-4 weeks and as soon as it is, it will be made available for manual download and installation from the support section on our corporate website

http://www.humaxdigital.com/hcsa/download/products/PVR-9200T.asp .

The OAD slot has been booked for broadcasting on the 14th to 16th of January 2008 with numerous repeat slots to follow ensuring that our users get this important update. As usual with OAD updates all PVR9200T/TS/TB users will receive this free of charge and automatically, as long as their PVR is set to the default setting to receive updates and the unit is in the standby mode overnight (please refer to your user manual if you are unsure). The details of all of the new features and changes in this new version of the software will be made available on our website.

About time too!

Tags: 9200t, freeview, humax, update

Paramount UK (hey, I used to work for them - sort of) is pushing 30 films through Joost. Go and enjoy, and if you need an account, just ask.

Tags: films, joost, paramount, watchable

I thought the Beta for Joost was open for all.  Turns out it isn’t - well at least not yet.  Anyway, I’ve got a bundle of invites to use if anyone wants to get on with trying it out.  Just drop a comment on this post and I’ll sign you up.

Tags: beta, intel, invites, joost, OS X

OK, I’ve just looked at the most recent Google brainwave inversion tracking stats for the site and found some traffic from discussion.apple.com. Seems that someone flagged the original Humax post I made as a ‘long winded’ approach to getting video from everyones’ (well, in the UK at least) twin decoder DVB PVR and converting it from MPEG TS.

Looking back at that post, it’s slightly out of date, so I’m re-casting that information here for people to follow as a simple recipe to video success on their Macs.

What you need to do:

1) Get a copy of the HumaxGUI application from Andrew Smith’s site and install it.

2) Connect your Hummy up to your Mac with a suitably long USB cable.

3) Open the HumaxGUI Application and connect to your PVR. This works just like an average FTP package - select the file you want and hit transfer.

4) Go and make tea, and more tea, and perhaps do the ironing. Take the dog for a walk, come back in, take a nap etc.

(Yes the USB implementation that Humax have achieved absolutely stinks for fast data transfer - so you’ll have time on your hands. The best approach here is to queue up what you want to transfer and then let it batch run overnight.)

5) Once you have the files on your Mac, you will need to either watch the files with something like VLC which will run just about anything.

6) If you want to change the video format to something else (QT, MP4 or MPEG2) then you will need to transcode it using either VLC (not had much luck there myself), or use the excellent MPEG Streamclip. The only caveat here is that for MPEG2, you might need to buy a copy of the Quicktime MPEG2 component from the Apple Store online. I think this runs at around £15 / $20.

That’s all there is to it. Honest.

Tags: 9200t, freeview, humax, OS X