New ISOBuster supports Panasonic DVR recordings from HDD to PC

[jwillis84]

The Alpha 4.3.4 is available for download from (URL path here)

The Latest Alpha version of 4.3.4 contains support for the following:

[tested]
------------------------------------------------------
Toshiba RD-XS32, 50, 52, 34, 54, 35, 55, 34SB, 34SJ
Philips 3575 and 3576
Magnavox 2160 and 513
RCA DRC8030
Pioneer 510, 520, 530, 533, 540, 550, 560, LX61, LX70
Panasonic E500H, EH50, EH55, EH75V, EH57, EH59, EH69, BS750, BS780, BS785

[via Feedback]
---------------------------------------------------------
Pio 555, Sony 680, 870 all identify as Pio 550/560 models, recordings were recovered

[theorectical scope of coverage]
--------------------------------
(2003) PATA E80H E100H
(2004) PATA E85H E95H E500H
(2005) PATA EH50 EH60
(2006) PATA EH55 EH75
(2007) PATA EH57 EH67
(2008) SATA EH58 EH68
(2009) SATA EH49 EH59 EH69
(2010) SATA BS750
(2011) SATA BS780 BS785

If you have any questions about this release please submit the questions to this thread and I'll try to answer as best I can.

The author will be unavailable following this release for several weeks.

No new recorder support is anticipated for some time.

(I am not the author, I am a Professional licensed user that tests alpha releases.)

Trial usage will list recordings it understands how to copy from the DVR HDD to the PC, but full functionality requires an up to date Professional License.

This is Alpha 4.3.4 an IsoBuster 4.0 license is current.

IsoBuster does not [mount] or [write] to the recorder hard drive while it is attached to a PC. The most reliable method of attaching a PATA or SATA drive to a PC is using a USB bridge or USB hard drive dock of some kind. This eliminates any potential Master/Slave or Cable Select conflicts.

The following warnings should be obvious:

[Do not Allow Windows to "Initialize" the recorder hard drive]

[Do not open the recorder hard drive with a Hex Editor]

The reasons and proof are varied but doing either "risks" destroying the ability for the recorder hard drive or your recorder being normally used after extracting recordings.

Recorders and their drives share resources in a one to one relationship, anything that writes to a recorder hard drive while it is attached to a PC.. "Strongly" risks divorcing or wrecking that relationship. It is best not to tempt fate. Recordings are not the only thing on many recorder hard drives, firmware used by the recorder CPU is often stored there too, writing anywhere on a recorder hard drive may damage the operating system on the recorder. Not all of the firmware is restored by reformatting a drive in the recorder, parts are installed (one time) at the factory and cannot be recovered.

(Cloning) is also not a 100 percent assured solution, some recorders "seem" to hash the unique guid of the hard drive, or use titles on the hard drive to make a unique hash stored in nvram. A clone drive very often will not work if substituted, and can request a reformat (don't do it!) recreating the hash for a new cloned drive will "break" the relationship with the former drive.. swapping it back in.. it will not work and those recordings will be orphaned to that drive.

Hex Editors (absolutely) are not universally "safe".

[jwillis84]

Update:

I got a genuine Panasonic EH58 and E100H to test with today.

The EH58 will extract recordings, but the meta data is offset.. so the Titles are not currently mapped in the "Panasonic" > "recordings" folder for easy selection. Peter has seen this before and should be able to make short work of it in a few weeks. Until that time.. do not expect to be able to easily select Titles for copying recordings (for the EH58, EH68). -- There is however a corresponding "IFO" file for each .VRO file in the [raw] folder.. so you can right click IFO and view the sector to get the Title and know which Numbered .VRO is which Title in plain text.. then select that.. so its not hopeless.. its just inconvenient for now.

--

The E100H is a member of almost the oldest family.. and its offset as well. And as nearly the "1st gen" its different enough the recordings are not currently broken out. Again Peter has worked his magic before and sorted this type of thing out.. so it will be just one more family.

A reminder.. IB works on drives where the recorder is non-functional.. even U99 non-functional.. you can still copy your recordings off. So if you have something on that hard drive, recorder or no recorder, IB can get it back for you.

---

I had a conversation with a user in Connecticut regarding the Magnavox support.. which we haven't had a lot of request for.. and they are still so darned expensive and hard to borrow.. I thought we would never even get to look at one.

But we did, and Peter found a way to support the Philips 3575, 3576 and Magnavox 2160 and 513.. and I thought we were done.

Then I had this conversation and heard back that the 537 wasn't working.. (we never looked at the 535 family, nor the 557 or the 515.. remember they are Eye Squintingly "expensive" right now.. )... but.. i think i have a line on a 535.. and barely.. just maybe .. a 557

[jwillis84]

More musings on Mags

So far the best testing has been on the Toshibas and the Pioneers, in many cases more than one recorder of each model was tested.

On all of the other models however we've had a "sample size" of one, and no way to know if IB will perform as expected on different recorders of the same brand and same model. Its an assumption. We do not have access to any of the firmware for any of the recorders and all of this has been accomplished by Peter reverse-understanding and "putting things back together" .. almost intuitively.

We have not had a ton of feedback.

We have had some.. which is really good, but not a lot of feedback.

The Magnavox support is based on these assumptions:

- not comprehensively covered yet ("spotty" coverage for now)

[theoretical scope of coverage]
--------------------------------
(2007) 3575 - philips
(2008) 3576 - philips

(2007) 2080
(2008) 2160
(2009) 2160A
(2010) 513
(2011) 515
(2012) 535 537
(2014) 557
(2015) 865 867 868
(2016) 877 TB560HP TB560HS

Most of this information comes from the AVSForum threads and historical record, but don't blame them if some of it is incorrect.

The 877 and its line never materialized in physical form, and showed up as mock-ups at a CES event sometime in 2017. Its assumed they were intended to be .m2ts recorders with SD burning to Blu-ray as .m2ps files similar to most products available in other countries around the world since 2011. The cost of Consumer Blu-ray burner drives however remained stubbornly high in the US.

It appears Magnavox tech "peaked" around 2011/2012 and sought community help in refining the user features after that. Although since the 800 series transitioned to Linux -- the fonts, and addressing other user feature requests may have slowed revisiting the DVD/Blu-ray authoring features that could be offered.

The defining feature of these is they are the only line to feature ATSC tuners for use with Over the Air broadcast recordings. And although they never had HDMI recording capability, many did have HDMI out, and they retained SD video inputs for recording until the very end. - Cable and Sat boxes going all digital with HDMI out more or less ended the need for SD inputs.. except for VHS to digital Capture.

[jwillis84]

Update:

I just got back from Boston this weekend.. yeah Red Hat Linux!

Peter got home crossing the planet... I mean like really crossing seven Seas and four Continents.. he had a long way to go to get home.

But he's already added support for the E100H and EH58 and took a good look at the mag535 and mag557.

E100H looks good.. all we had to work with was half a broken hard drive image, but it looks supported.. but I will get a full E100H recorder to verify with on Tuesday

EH58 had to come from Asia.. since I could not find one in all of North America.

i.e. I could "not" find one to buy beg or borrow to test with.. but it finally arrived and Peter got it supported quickly and it is verified.

The mag535 is wacko strange.. Peter got the meta data sorted out super fast.. but the recordings are co-mingled with something like a prequel Live buffer which seems to follow recordings around the disk.. which messes things up. I don't know if the resident Super genius will be able to solve this puzzle. As I said we don't have access to any firmware.. and the disk format is strange.

The mag557 is even stranger if you can believe it. Again Peter saw some really interesting stuff fast.. but under test it seems to have one or two Live buffers, perhaps preceding and trailing a recording.. so major headache time.

I don't know if the 535 or 557 models will ever be supported.. we will just have to see if Peter can solve the mysteries.

I've had some thoughts about the mag 865 and mag 867 lately. There seems to be a trailing sweater thread to their opaqueness.. which Windows "may" support with some code that was abandoned about five years ago. I am not sure if it will work.. if it did.. the USB attached external HDD should turn transparent at the same time as the internal HDD.

You would "in theory" still need IB to recover the recordings.. but these are 2014, 2015 models.. I never thought we should touch those.. and no one seems to really be interested in supporting those yet.. so its just a glimmer of a thought for the moment.

So that's the Monday update.

[jwillis84]

Late delivery, update to the update:

Peter figured out the issue with the mag535 and the mag557.. much to my doubting chagrin.

The increments of the recording chunks doubled in Size! How stupendously obvious.. between the mag513 to the mag535 they doubled.

He fixed it immediately and everything .. well.. it just "works".

Amazing.. I gotta get out of the business of thinking anything is impossible for this guy.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwillis84

I gotta get out of the business of thinking anything is impossible for this guy.

Polaroid, JVC.

[jwillis84]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Polaroid, JVC.

Uh..

Your gonna Luv this!

I'm all out of ammunition for him to work on at the moment.

So he scrounged around at home and found he has an old [ Medion MD 81888 ]

Which to my recollection is based on the TFS2, same as the Polaroid.. so if he cracks that nut.. Polaroid should be easy.

Note, it really wasn't that it was impossible.. it was just that it was very frustrating. I thought he got really far far along.. but the reverse backstepping up towards the top of the drive drove us nuts.. and we just gave up for a while. It made no kind of sense except to confuse and annoy. LSI had a consulting business with its CWare libraries and after acquiring C-Cube for their DominoFX chip.. it seemed to be bundled with their manufacturer.. 'build your own DVR kit'.. so it ended up in a lot of low end DVRs of the time.

Ok strong indications Medion was a clone brother of all the LG "RH-" brand/models.. so they could all be based on TFS2 as well. Photos of the insides all show LSI digitizer boards.

[lordsmurf]

Well this looks promising: http://ifndef.altervista.org/index_eng.html

Especially these:

• From_hdd_lg_to_pc v1.12 by Val238, to save HDD content to PC (Win2000/XP)
• From_hdd_lg_to_pc v2.06 new beta version: added new function to fix remaining time for recording

[jwillis84]

I would be tempted to try some of those on Polaroid.. but have learned Peter is so fast at working on things he might have it before i got very far.

I know he's super busy the next day or two.. but I'm still sort of surprised he got the 535 and 557 so darned fast. I mean I saw the whole process.. it was a puzzle, a problem.. and suddenly solved.