Icecrypt T2400 Freeview HD PVR review

My review of the IceCrypt T2400 Freeview HD PVR has now been published on Register Hardware. Here I’m going to add a few more bits of information, which couldn’t all be fitted in the space I had over on RH.

Firstly, the overall summary – I gave the unit 70%, because I think it’s pretty much as good as the Digital Stream, to which I gave 75%, and adds media playback facilities that the Digital Stream doesn’t have at the moment. But, set against that, it has an EPG that is rather flawed, in my view, and doesn’t support Dolby Digital transcoding.

Now, that may change in future – I know that the people at IceCrypt understand the importance of this – but it’s not yet a firm commitment, and as I’ve said many times before, it really makes sense to buy a product on what you know it does now, rather than what you hope it will do, if it gets an update at some unspecified time in the future.

For those who want to know, the review was written based primarily on firmware version 1.04.4A, loader 1.02, Micom 1.24.00, though I’ve had a pretty steady stream of firmwares since the box arrived in November, and already have another one (1.04.6A) to install.

Remote control

There are a few other impressions of the T2400 that I want to jot down, in no particular order.

First, the remote; one other reviewer didn’t like this, but actually I find the positive click of the buttons as you press them quite good. It’s not a full universal remote, but it can control your TV – the manual (which I’ve linked to below) has a table of codes in the back.

There are a couple of niggles around how the remote is used, though, which I hope will be addressed soon. To jump around using the yellow ad-skip button, you have to bring up the progress bar, which you do with the navigation keys; that’s fine, as it’s only two presses to skip the ad break – up, then yellow. But if you press pause, you can’t jump without pressing play first, which I find a little irksome. That might not bother everyone of course, but I find it’s quite a common thing for me to want to do – for example, the ads come on, so I press pause, pop to the kitchen for a drink, and when I come back I want to jump past the ads and carry on watching. Ideally I’d like to press the yellow button and have play resume. But it doesn’t – you have to press play first, and then yellow, and those two buttons are quite a long distance apart.

A very nice touch, which I’m afraid I omitted from the RegHardware review, is the handling of Audio Description. There’s a dedicated button for this, and it’s the bottom left, so very easy to find by touch. And there’s an audible signal too, with two tones when it’s turned on, and a single one when it’s turned off, so even if you can’t see the screen display, you know whether you’ve set it the way you want.

The Advanced menu is where you need to go to set up media playback

Media playback

It’s worth talking a little about the media playback in the box, as it works in a way that will be unfamiliar to many people. You’ll need to go to the Advanced menu, and there are two relevant sections.

The ‘Media Settings’ menu allows you to say how much of the hard drive should be reserved for media files – the default is 10% You can also set the slide show time, and registration for DivX files (not that I’ve ever found anyone who needed that).

You need to make a note of the T2400's IP address before you can connect to it

The Network setting screen is the important thing in terms of transferring media to your unit; the default setting seemed to be ‘Manual’ rather than ‘DHCP’ so you’ll need to change that, and you may want to restart the PVR. Go back into the menu and you’ll see the IP address that’s been allocated by your router. You need to make a note of this – in the case of my unit, it’s 10.0.1.26.

You can connect to the T2400 with any FTP program

To connect to the unit you need to either use an FTP program (there’s a command line one built into the Mac, for example, as shown in the screen) and connect to the IP address; you can just press enter when asked for a name – it doesn’t matter, as the PVR only accepts anonymous logins.

For a command line FTP program, you’d type (replacing my IP address with the one of your T2400)

ftp 10.0.1.26

Then you could type dir to see a list of the files you’ve stored, as in the screen – though note that only the .divx, .avi and .mkv files will appear when you browse media on the box.

Enter the FTP url of the T2400 and you'll see the files in a window on your desktop

Mac users can mount the drive in the finder by pressing Apple/Command-K and entering the server address ftp://10.0.1.26 then pressing Enter and selecting ‘Guest’ as the logon type. You’ll then be able to drag files into the PVR window.

In Windows XP, you can type ftp://10.0.1.26 into the Open box on the Start menu, while in Vista and Win 7 just type that into the search box, and press Enter.

Programme transfer

As I mentioned in the review, you can’t transfer recorded programmes from the unit via FTP. You can copy to a USB drive (FAT32 formatted), but only SD programmes – HD can’t be exported from the box.

These are the files you'll see when you export a recording from the T2400 to a USB drive

As the screenshot shows, when you copy a recording, you actually end up with a several files, in a folder that’s named (more or less) for the programme name. I recorded a concert listed in the EPG as ‘Bruce Springsteen: Darkness …’ and it shows up in the list on the T2400 as ‘Bruce Springsteen_Darkness___’. Copy to a USB drive and what you end up with is a folder named 000&&Bruce Springsteen_ Darkness___, which contains the list of files shown in the screenshot. The .TRP file is the actual broadcast programme, and plays in MPEG StreamClip and VLC on the Mac, so should play fine with VLC on Windows too (though my version of VLC did display an error message, it still played fine).

I’ve not analysed all the files that are exported, but the .TH0 file contains the programme description from the EPG.

Other quirks

One of the quirks I mentioned in the RegHardware review is pausing radio – that’s something that you can’t do. In fact, it looks as if the hard drive is powered down when you switch to radio mode, unless you’re recording something.

If you want to be able to pause the radio, then you need to start recording – and remember that pressing the Record button only records up to the end of the current programme – and then go to the file list, and start playing from there. You can then pause, rewind and do whatever else you want to, but unless you set a very long recording, it’ll only work until the end of the current programme, when the recording stops, and you’ll be taken back to the live broadcast.

Another little oddity, though not one that will affect many people, I think, is that it appears you can only start one instant recording at a time. So you can’t press record while watching TV, switch to another channel and press record again to start recording that one. Dual records set by timers work just fine (and as with the other Korean boxes, like Topfield, Humax and Digital Stream, you can watch any channel available on the multiplexes being recorded).

So, that’s more or less it – I’ll be playing a little more, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask them here, or in the thread over at AV Forums.

T2400 manual (PDF)

Do you really want the internet on your TV?

TVs with network connections are all the rage; they’re not actually that new – I looked at some for RegHardware a while back – but this year’s CES show brought forth lots of new ones, and updates to existing ranges. Google is trying to get in on the act too, with some TVs and set top boxes featuring it’s Google TV system (which has not, it has to be said, been universally well received).

And, doubtless I, and many of my colleagues on various technical blogs, as well as marketing people, will be extolling the virtues of these ‘net connected’ TVs, possibly even referring to them as “Internet TVs.”

In some ways, I think that’s a potential mistake.

The internet? Really?

It’s very easy to get carried away with the technology; I’m sure plenty of people will, and there are plenty of sites where those of us with a detailed technical interest will be poring over the details of new TV sets, wondering if they support SMB as well as UPnP for network media playback, and whether they can be controlled as DLNA renderers by other devices.

But ordinary members of the public aren’t like that. And I think that if you said to many of them “Do you want the internet on your TV?” the answer would probably be “Good grief, no.”

Why’s that? Partly because some consumers have been here before, with other devices. Internet on your mobile phone? Thanks.

Oh. It turned out to be just WAP.

For the average consumer, even a modern touch screen phone can still be a bit disappointing, and that’s if they even try using the net functions – many probably don’t bother, after the first flush of playing with a new toy.

So, outside the core tech-savvy market, I think that there are a lot of people who will be resistant to the idea of something called an “internet TV”; they’ll view things that they do on the net as largely being separate from things they might want to do on the TV with other people in the room.

That’s not to say that connected TVs are pointless, by any means. Just that I think how they’re actually described to ordinary people is crucial, not just in terms of whether or not they buy them (because, like HD Ready, in a few years, most TVs will probably have a network connection on the back), but whether or they actually use those features.

I’ve heard from people, for example, who have friends or family who have been delighted to discover that actually, their TV had iPlayer or LoveFilm built in, and they just needed to connect it up and learn how to access it. But they only learned that when a friend or family member explained it, rather than from the person selling them the set.

A few months ago, Humax talked at the unveiling of their Freeview HD recorder about how to get the message across in shops, especially when some of the first products with all these features are going to priced at a premium. Some of the UK’s high street chains, like Currys and Comet, offer awful and misleading advice, and I’m not convinced they really will be able to explain these products to people.

Keep it simple

Outside our bubble of people really interested in technology, it’s important to remember that there are plenty of people for whom things like Twitter are utterly irrelevant. The thought of using YouTube comes pretty far down the list too. Most TVs probably aren’t bought by net-savvy people in their 20s and 30s.

There are people who want to watch TV; they might have an internet connection for email or Skype, but the idea of “internet on the TV” will leave them cold, if that’s how it’s presented by the pushy salespeople of big high street retailers.

What’s going to make people think this is worthwhile is not the technology. It’s what they can do with it – and that means, in the UK, things like iPlayer, 4OD and ITV Player. It means other concepts they can easily understand, like film rental via LoveFilm, or perhaps access to sports events without having to take out an annual subscription.

Though technical evangelists might like the play up the argument that internet delivery lowers the cost of entry, and can bring lots of niche content, there’s a reason it’s niche. Not many people are interested in it.

This is, essentially, another version of the ‘content is king’ argument. Ordinary people want their familiar TV shows; they want to know that that’s what the Ethernet socket on the back of their TV gets them, and they might be interested in some extras, if you explain in terms they understand.

And, incidentally, I think this is one reason why YouView is likely to do fairly well, by integrating catch-up TV in the EPG, rather than burying it away as a separate function, or talking about the internet.

Words matter

I really think that talking about “Internet TVs” or even “Connected TVs” isn’t actually going to enthuse huge portions of the buying public. Focussing on app platforms for the TV might appeal to those who have an iPhone – but the vast majority of people don’t; they don’t even have a smartphone.

The technology can be clever as you like, and often is. But unless you talk to people about it in terms that really mean something to them, you’re going to have a hard job persuading them to buy a “connected TV,” let alone actually connecting it up when they get it home.

PlayTV – a quick response to a quirky update

Some readers of The Register passed on news of a problem they’ve been experiencing with PlayTV – the add-on to the PS3 that lets you use it to watch and record Freeview.

It appears that, after updating to version 2.02, some users are experiencing PlayTV hanging, and the advice from Sony’s support line is that you should re-install the software.

It’s important to point out that if you do that, then your recordings will be lost; you need to export them to XMB first if you want to keep them.

I’ve written a news item about this for RegHardware, and in that I described the Sony response as a “corporate shrug.” I think, actually, that’s being quite generous. Users have paid for an update; it’s clearly affected enough of them for Sony to say it’s heard about the problem, and this is their response:

We are aware of the issues some PlayTV users are currently experiencing. We will fix these issues through future updates.

When I first received that response on Friday afternoon, I pointed out to the PR that I didn’t think it would be terribly appreciated by the users affected, and that it amounts to little more than “we know, we’ll get to it sometime.”

Specifically, is there a time-frame for an update? Will those who paid for the current version be able to get a refund? And can Sony suggest any work-arounds in the meantime? I think those are all reasonable questions.

The PR told me he’d try to get an answer on Monday; in the event, I waited until Tuesday lunchtime before submitting the story.

As some commenters on the RegHardware story point out, it’s hard to get a feel for exactly how many people are affected; but certainly some are – and whether it’s a dozen people, 120 or 1,200 that have ended up losing all their recordings as a result of re-installing, or simply not getting what they thought they would when they paid for an upgrade, I do think that they deserve a little more information than they’re getting at the moment.

Upgrading to 3CX 9

Over the holidays, I took the plunge and updated my home phone system to version 3 of the 3CX software PBX. There are various improvements in version 9, including automatic blacklisting of IP addresses to help ward off VoIP hackers, and some options such as ringing your mobile at the same time as your extension.

The former will be quite useful – I’ve disabled direct SIP calls through my firewall at the moment, because once you turn them on, script kiddies will attack your PBX – though since my phone can connect to 3CX via mobile data, that’s cheaper than having the system call it the old fashioned way.

Installing the update

In theory, upgrading from 3CX 8 to 3CX 9 is straightforward. You use the backup tool to save your configuration (which can include all your voicemail files), uninstall version 8, then install version 9 and, during the initial setup wizard, you point it at the backup file, rather than walking through the installer and picking things like the number of digits for extensions, who’s the operator, and so on.

That’s the theory. In practice, it didn’t work. Installation went without a hitch, but then when the config wizard started, it told me there was a problem starting the ‘secondary database service’ and wasn’t able to go any further. The same happened when I tried to create a new PBX from scratch, thinking that perhaps I could then restore all my old settings.

In the end, the solution was pretty simple. After trying uninstalling and reinstalling a couple of times, I simply quit the config wizard when it started, and followed the instructions at the bottom of this article to perform a restore of the database from the command prompt.

That worked a treat, and got 3CX up and running again with all my old settings restored – aside from a couple of tweaks that were needed.

Time-based call forwarding

Some of the call forwarding rules that I set up using 3CX 8 weren’t imported to 3CX 9, because things are done slightly differently. For my business line, I use the Office Hours functionality of 3CX, ensuring that if anyone calls me outside 10am-6pm Monday to Friday, their call goes to voicemail.

I have a private number for family that always rings, and another number that I give to more casual acquaintances, like people I’ve chatted up. I obviously don’t want to be woken up in the middle of the night by a weirdo from the pub, so that number needs a different set of rules. Essentially, I only want calls to this number to ring between about 9am and 10pm.

In 3CX 8, that could be done by setting up advanced forwarding rules, which allowed you to specify certain hours in a rule, and direct calls accordingly, so to the voice menu during the daytime (which warns cold callers they may as well go away right now), and to voicemail the rest of the time. Incoming calls to the ‘public’ number were directed to a spare extension, which then used the rules to forward the call, and the voice menu would connect lucky winners to the phones in a particular ring group.

That’s not available in version 9, but there is a way to do it, once you get your head round how things work.

Forwarding rules in 3CX 9

in 3CX 9, an extension's status can be set automatically, based on time of day

Forwarding in version 9 is done by the phone status, eg Away, Busy and so on. But there are also two Custom status as well, and these are key to controlling calls by time of day the way I wanted them to be.

First, on the Office Hours tab for an extension, you can now choose global or specific office hours, so my spare or virtual extension can have its own office hours set.

Below that, you can tick ‘Automatically switch Office Hours Profiles.’

Move to the Other tab, and set the status of the extension to Custom #1 if it’s in office hours, or Custom #2 if it’s not. Now, the system will automatically switch between these two settings, based on the time of day.

Use the custom phone statuses to control call forwarding by time of day

On the Forwarding tab, there are sub-tabs for the different statuses, so on Custom #1 I have calls set to forward to the voice menu for call screening, and on Custom #2 they’re all forwarded to voicemail.

Once you’ve made the changes on all the tabs, just click Apply at the bottom right, and you’re done.

It’s the little touches that make a PVR

I recently published a well-deserved critique of Topfield, makers of the TF5800 PVR. But it’s worth recalling some of the things that their boxes do really cleverly – or can be made to do – that make them still the PVR of choice for many people.

Last night, I was catching up on some recordings on another PVR I’m testing. After I finished that, I realised that a new series of Silent Witness had started 20 minutes ago, and I was completely unaware, so hadn’t set a timer.

A quick glance at the front panel of the Toppy revealed that it was fortuitously on BBC1 – I switch mine off to reboot once a week, but otherwise leave it on – which meant that everything from the previous hour was stored on the hard drive.

So, switching over the the Toppy, I was able to rewind back to the beginning of Silent Witness.

More cleverly, thanks to a TAP I use called ImproBox, and a patch in the firmware, all I had to do was to press the record button, and the unit went right back to the start of the buffered TV, turned it into a recording, with the end time set to stop four minutes after the scheduled end of Silent Witness. At the same time, it automatically set two bookmarks in the recording, one at the start of each programme it contained.

So, a quick press of the green key jumped me straight over whatever was on before Silent Witness, directly to the start of the programme. And all, essentially, with just one press of the Record button.

That sort of flexibility is what many of us will miss, if we have to move to one of the current crop of Freeview HD recorders.