Record to USB

ic1male

ic1male

ic1male

Caporegime
Joined
28 Oct 2003
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I've been looking at a few Sony TVs to go with a PS4 purchase. Looking at the specs, Record to USB is a feature I wasn't previously aware of. Does this mean I can plug in my 1TB Seagate Expansion drive (powered externally) and use this to save Freeview HD recordings?

The TVs-
sony-bravia-kdl32w7
sony-bravia-kdl40r483
 
Check how many tuners the TV has, though. I can record to USB on my Panasonic GT60 which is useful (as I only have an SD Humax PVR), but you have to be watching the channel its recording which is all a bit pointless!
 
They both have only 1 tuner but I'd use the feature more of a way to archive good programmes rather than a watch one/record another type thing.
 
This might be a daft question but if I set a programme to record, will it do it if the TV is in standby? :p

EDIT: I'll answer this question now. Yes, it does record in standby (the display doesn't switch on but you have a red LED to show recording is happening).
 
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Best thing to do is trawl through the manual to find out! My GT60 records in standby, but not if its off.
 
Scam said:
Best thing to do is trawl through the manual to find out! My GT60 records in standby, but not if its off.
Click to expand...

I have done. :p There is literally nothing in the manual about it except how to get to the recordings menu. That's it. I don't even know if you can schedule recordings or whether it's simply a feature to record what you're currently watching, e.g. if someone comes round or you have to go out for a while, etc.
 
Well the new TV came today.

However, when I plug in a USB device none of the menus come up! I can't view media on the pen drive nor register it as a new recording device.

Is my new tele buggered already?
 
I think there's a limit to what you can plug in. I know mine (different Tv mind) won't take an external drive. Try just a standard USB stick if you've not already.
 
It says in the manual it can read FAT, FAT32 and NTFS.

So I tried a mains powered USB HDD which did nothing. Then a bus powered portable USB HDD which also did nothing. Then a USB pen drive which did nothing but I've got a feeling the latter was formatted as CDFS as it had a Windows ISO image on it. Going to format it and and try again.

EDIT: Success! But it now says you need a minimum of 32GB. My drive is only 16GB. :(

EDIT2: Another success! Formatted my Seagate 2TB mains powered expansion drive on the PC and tried that again. It now works. I wonder if the fact it had 1600 video files on it when I previously connected it was slowing the TV OS down. Maybe it was trying to get video thumbnails for all those?
 
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johnyccc said:
And which format were they in? :)
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My video files? They were a mixture of MOV and MP4. But I've read somewhere on Google that someone else had trouble with external media that had a lot of videos on. For some reason, the TV ignored the folder structure and was going through getting thumbnails for each file.

But then again, it could have just been having a funny turn. It certainly seems a very quirky television. Already it's changed channels by itself, lost Freeview signal for no obvious reason and took 10 seconds to switch itself off after my pressing the power button on the remote!

Looks like I'll have to keep my eye on it. At least it's got a 5 year guarantee.
 
The format of the files that the TV records? Dunno. I read elsewhere that you can only read the filesystem in Linux and then the files themselves are encrypted.
 
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