USB Hard drive for recording

[AnthonyL]

My new telly, LG49uj670v, allows recording to a USB stick, but if I
want pause, catch-up facilities I need a USB drive, apparently a
minimum of 40Gb but I'm thinking of bigger than that anyway.

I'd prefer a drive that is powered by the TV's USB port just for
simplicity.

Any recommendations?

--
AnthonyL

[Indy Jess John]

I have got a Toshiba 500Gb USB-powered portable drive connected to my
(different model of) LG TV.

There are a couple of things to bear in mind:
- You have to let the TV format the drive before it will record on it.
Once formatted and with a recording on it, a Windows PC can't read it at
all; a Linux laptop will give a file list of what is on the disc, but I
haven't managed to find anything among the Linux utilities that can
understand what is in the files it lists; nor are the file names
obviously meaningful. Effectively, if the TV records on the drive only
the TV can play them back.

- The playback isn't always as smooth as you get from a PVR, at least on
my TV. You get occasional millisecond pauses, suggesting that when the
TV processor is doing other things it steals a few processing cycles
from the disc handling; or else it doesn't buffer ahead so I see a very
short pause as it navigates the logical join between physical files. It
remains watchable, but I do notice it.

Jim

[Johnny B Good]

That's the weakness of USB2 on kit that isn't using the almighty
processing power of an Intel CPU to deal with the cpu cycle intensive PIO
mode of an interface standard that was designed to upsell more powerful
Intel CPUs. When you have most of the video signal processing offloaded
onto dedicated hardware, you don't need very much by way of "CPU Grunt"
in your Smart TV (or set top box).

You just might be able to eliminate the problem by using an SSD based USB
drive in place of that Toshiba laptop class HDD.

--
Johnny B Good

[Indy Jess John]

On 30/05/2018 03:21, Johnny B Good wrote:
> On Tue, 29 May 2018 22:45:54 +0100, Indy Jess John wrote:
>

>> - The playback isn't always as smooth as you get from a PVR, at least on
>> my TV.
>

> You just might be able to eliminate the problem by using an SSD based USB
> drive in place of that Toshiba laptop class HDD.
>

I have got a PVR which I use most of the time. The HDD is only there
for the few occasions when there are too many concurrent or overlapping
programmes for the PVR to cope with even with the +1 channels, and the
HDD captures the one where I am least likely to be bothered about
hesitations.

I had thought of trying an SSD to see if it is an improvement, but my
current HDD is used so rarely that it hasn't been worth spending the
money. It might be an option for the OP to consider though, because at
this stage he hasn't bought anything.

Jim

[Brian Gaff]

Are you saying that a flash drive won't be able to beat the speed of a hard
drive?
I think nowadays this is rubbish, and as for costs, I've seen a recent
advert for a, wait for it, half terrabyte thumb drive, mind you its only
available in the uds and costs 300 dollars!

Brian

--
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"AnthonyL" <nos...@please.invalid> wrote in message
news:5b0db247...@85.214.115.223...

[Robin]

Sorry but half a terabyte won't win many willy waving competitions now
you can buy a 2 terabyte USB flash. Eg Amazon will do you a Kingston
one for a bit under £1,400. With free UK delivery!

On 30/05/2018 11:35, Brian Gaff wrote:
> Are you saying that a flash drive won't be able to beat the speed of a hard
> drive?
> I think nowadays this is rubbish, and as for costs, I've seen a recent
> advert for a, wait for it, half terrabyte thumb drive, mind you its only
> available in the uds and costs 300 dollars!
>
> Brian
>


--

Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

[AnthonyL]

On Wed, 30 May 2018 11:35:44 +0100, "Brian Gaff"
<bri...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

>Are you saying that a flash drive won't be able to beat the speed of a hard
>drive?
> I think nowadays this is rubbish, and as for costs, I've seen a recent
>advert for a, wait for it, half terrabyte thumb drive, mind you its only
>available in the uds and costs 300 dollars!
>

My flash drive records but won't do play/catchup, a hard drive, as
stated in the instruction manual, is required.

As I intend to watch some of the World Cup and might need comfort
breaks (more so as I age) and will no doubt imbibe the occasional beer
or cup of tea it will be handy to hit pause and continue from where I
left off on my return.

I have a PVR but it is not HD. It does have the advantage of readily
allowing recordings to be copied to a computer (ref my post to Jim
Lesurf)


--
AnthonyL

[AnthonyL]

Annoyingly I cannot find anything that clarifies whether the set is
USB 2 or 3 and so don't know if there's any advantage in paying a bit
more for USB 3.0.

> You just might be able to eliminate the problem by using an SSD based USB
>drive in place of that Toshiba laptop class HDD.
>

That's a thought though if I'm going to splash out more it gets near
to be worth buying a dedicated PVR.

--
AnthonyL

[NY]

"AnthonyL" <nos...@please.invalid> wrote in message

news:5b0e8b4c...@85.214.115.223...

> As I intend to watch some of the World Cup and might need comfort
> breaks (more so as I age) and will no doubt imbibe the occasional beer
> or cup of tea it will be handy to hit pause and continue from where I
> left off on my return.
>
> I have a PVR but it is not HD. It does have the advantage of readily
> allowing recordings to be copied to a computer (ref my post to Jim
> Lesurf)

Thinking laterally, given that you've got a PC, how about buying a USB TV
decoder and using software such as NextPVR to record. I use a PCTV 292e DVB
USB receiver and NextPVR, and it records SD and HD to .ts files on either
hard disk or memory stick which can be played anywhere - eg using VLC.

[Andrew]

On 30/05/2018 03:21, Johnny B Good wrote:

Or buy a cheap Humax PVR from humaxdirect, and it will do the job
properly :-)

[tim...]

"AnthonyL" <nos...@please.invalid> wrote in message

news:5b0e8b4c...@85.214.115.223...

> On Wed, 30 May 2018 11:35:44 +0100, "Brian Gaff"
> <bri...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Are you saying that a flash drive won't be able to beat the speed of a
>>hard
>>drive?
>> I think nowadays this is rubbish, and as for costs, I've seen a recent
>>advert for a, wait for it, half terrabyte thumb drive, mind you its only
>>available in the uds and costs 300 dollars!
>>
>
> My flash drive records but won't do play/catchup, a hard drive, as
> stated in the instruction manual, is required.

Well that's because it's a "flash" drive and as such will have NAND inside.

NAND only works efficiently if you stream continuous data to/from it.
Reading/writing locations randomly, which is what you will have to do if
trying to do both at the same time is very inefficient. There's no
mechanism on a standard NAND device to efficiently read and write at the
same time

whereas the rotation of a disk makes it quite simple for a disc controller
to efficiently set up streams of data to/from different locations on the
disk

The problem is inherent in the technology. Spending more on a solution
isn't going to help

tim

[tim...]

"Andrew" <Andrew9...@mybtinternet.com> wrote in message
news:pem7bl$1vd8$1...@gioia.aioe.org...

Not IME

tim

[AnthonyL]

Well yes that's why I don't want to spend much on a USB drive - but
for the moment there's still some life, even if no HD, in my Toppy.

--
AnthonyL

[AnthonyL]

Location of computer and aerials :(

--
AnthonyL

[AnthonyL]

On Wed, 30 May 2018 15:42:17 +0100, "tim..." <tims_n...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>
>
>"Andrew" <Andrew9...@mybtinternet.com> wrote in message
>news:pem7bl$1vd8$1...@gioia.aioe.org...
>>>
>>

>> Or buy a cheap Humax PVR from humaxdirect, and it will do the job
>> properly :-)
>
>Not IME
>

Expand please.

--
AnthonyL

[Vir Campestris]

On 30/05/2018 15:37, tim... wrote:
>
> whereas the rotation of a disk makes it quite simple for a disc
> controller to efficiently set up streams of data to/from different
> locations on the disk

I haven't seen a disc that will read and/or write more than one location
at the same time since about 1980. And I bet you've never seen one at all.

Andy

[Andy Burns]

Drum yes, disc no (at least, I think the various DEC dual-ported drives
were single actuator).

Seagate are planning multi-actuator drives for next year.
<https://blog.seagate.com/enterprises/mach2-and-hamr-breakthrough-ocp>

I hadn't heard of their technology to include a laser within the heads
to heat the area being written.

[tim...]

"AnthonyL" <nos...@please.invalid> wrote in message

news:5b0fdc8e...@85.214.115.223...

Humax PVRs are not fault free

I have 2 (a Freeview and a Freesat model) and both occasionally don't make a
recording they they are supposed to, because of software fuck ups

tim

[tim...]

"Vir Campestris" <vir.cam...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:pepm1f$jmh$1...@dont-email.me...

> On 30/05/2018 15:37, tim... wrote:
>>
>> whereas the rotation of a disk makes it quite simple for a disc
>> controller to efficiently set up streams of data to/from different
>> locations on the disk
>
> I haven't seen a disc that will read and/or write more than one location
> at the same time since about 1980.

well obviously not at exactly the same time

I did try to choose my words so as not to imply that, not successfully it
seems.

tim

[Richard Tobin]

In article <pepm1f$jmh$1...@dont-email.me>,

Samsung are supposedly working on them:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/19/seagate_disk_drive_multi_actuator/

They don't have multiple heads on the same platter though, so you
can regard them as two separate drives on the same spindle.

-- Richard

[AnthonyL]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2018 14:51:55 +0100, "tim..." <tims_n...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Long live my Toppy then. Super software if you install the MyStuff
package and a replacement list of dodgy capacitors.

Just no High Def :(

--
AnthonyL

[Norman Wells]

On 02/06/2018 10:14, AnthonyL wrote:

> Long live my Toppy then. Super software if you install the MyStuff
> package and a replacement list of dodgy capacitors.
>
> Just no High Def :(

Any more serious drawbacks you'd like to list?

[AnthonyL]

On Sat, 2 Jun 2018 10:19:21 +0100, Norman Wells <h...@unseen.ac.am>
wrote:

No, just the lack of High Def as stated.


--
AnthonyL