You may remember that I’m quite a satellite TV fan, having installed it in 2004 and compiled a FAQ. Over the holidays, I replaced my 4-year-old Digiquest receiver (terrible website) with a FortecStar FS-4400 PVR from Maplin.
I’d love to build a MythTV but how am I ever going to build such a small, quiet receiver for anything like that price? The FS-4400’s decoder gives a dribblingly clear picture and (one firmware upgrade later) the recorder works flawlessly. I can even watch other channels on the same transponder while recording. It has a couple of small niggles (the file manager that appears every damn power-on, the pidgin English on-screen displays and it’s too easy to activate the motor), but it seems pretty good value on the whole.
Now I’ve a dilemma. I put a 4Gb USB stick into it, just to see how I got on with the recording. I like it, but 4Gb is enough for only 2 or 3 hours and I don’t want to get into swapping sticks around like video casettes. I still don’t know what’s where on half my tapes.
I’ve seen a few places report things like Solid State Drives Getting Ready to Take Over (by Jaymi Heimbuch) with much larger capacity just around the corner, but the best rate I found today is around 1 Gb/pound for SSDs up to about 32Gb, compared to nearly 10 Gb/pound for USB-powered hard disks from around 300Gb. On the flip side, SSDs are silent and I don’t know how noisy or power-hungry the HDDs are. How would you play this?
By the way, if you care about UK TV, BERR.gov.uk is consulting about reducing Sky’s control of itv – what’s to consult about? Sky’s doing all they can through the courts to drag their feet, but we need to put the independent back into independent television! Tell them by Friday 23 January 2009, please.
Take the opportunity to try out SSDs. MemoryC seem to be reasonably-priced, my recent purchase weighed in at £2.87/GB. Sure, the capacity is typically lower, but the speed can be higher (depending on what type of SSD you get and your interface speed, buyer beware). Pay close attention to the read and write speeds when you buy.
FWIW, I have never met an external HDD that isn’t loud to the point of being annoying. If you can afford it, I’d recommend an SSD.
I’m using a 2.5″ 250gig HDD in a USB2 enclosure. I formatted the drive via the FS4400. It is silent and works fine. There is a slight delay when calling up the EPG since fitting the drive.
SSD’s are too small and expensive. My HDD & enclosure cost about £50.
Thanks Anthony. Which HDD and enclosure are you using? I’ve upgraded to a bigger flash stick for now, but the receiver reboots when it’s inserted, which definitely rules out swapping them around like tapes!
i have just bought a FS4400 and am tryin to update the firmware. I have downloaded the ugrade file but am having .bin match erros when trying to install.
Could anyone please post a detailed description of how to upgrade from downloading the file through to reciever upgrade.
@Ozz – if you are getting as far as having .bin match errors, it sounds like you’re probably doing the right thing. The firmware I am using at the moment is
4194304 2008-12-16 17:03 product_glass_sky29e_sdk.abs
has an md5sum of d2a064697e214ba9c7f7a17fd4ecbad7
I think I copied that file (and maybe the config.inc from the same zip) to the root of a USB stick, plugged it into the receiver and then picked something like Tools: Upgrade by USB from the menu.
[…] TV broadcasts can be captured as MP2 by MythTV or even 50-quid black box home entertainment devices. The DRM-free file can be played back on a computer with mplayer -demuxer +mpegts filename.dvr or […]
I have a fortec star fs4400.
can you please help, I have tried to download software upgrade by usb, but the reciever just has ASH or could be A5H on the display. Can you help
I’ve no idea. The only thing I found while searching is that the box maybe can be reflashed either by the producer or with software from them. Have you tried asking http://www.fortecstar.com/contact_us.html for help?
Though I’ve just written that, I see the RS-232 cable upgrade software is now on http://www.fortecstar.com/4400-sw.html for download whenever you want. There’s also a firmware released October 2010 – was that the one you tried?
Has anyone had any joy with the ASH issue after updating with the latest firmware? I’ve tried with a null modem rs232 cable, but all I can get the device to display CONN (whilst updating) instead of ASH?!
The snow’s slowing me down in getting the right cable. How did you end up at ASK? I need a cable because the instructions PDF says not to use USB when the menu says Allcode and not Allcode+Bootloader.
Have you tried reuploading the previously-used firmware?
Has anyone tried asking FortecStar about this mess? It seems a bit of a poor show to put out a firmware that doesn’t work in the obvious way and the warning in a PDF in a different download.
I have had no luck with the rs232 cable. It won’t do anything for me. i can’t seem to get it to sync with the box. does the cable need to be installed? it is usb one end and rs232 female the other. should i be using sr232 male to rs232 female?
As for Fortec, they are useless to help. Their back up is very bad and i totally agree about the warning. I tried the usb option first and this led me to this mess. I loved the box before I tried to upgrade it. i should have left well enough alone
My best guess so far is that it needs a USB-serial adapter – and they usually have 9-way male connectors, so a female-to-female cable is needed. A simple USB-serial cable (as used for some cameras) won’t work. But again, another day, more snow, no delivery, no cable for me, so I’m just guessing.
Past upgrades have actually fixed annoying bugs, like one last year where the box didn’t switch on from standby for timer recordings, so I don’t think leaving alone is really an option. Fortec don’t actually say on the website what’s different in the new firmware. So we’re buying a pig in a poke. If only it was free and open source software!
I got the FS-4400 as a low-cost low-time low-power alternative to one of the Linux-based receivers. I feel like I’ve been taught a lesson again.
I’ll try the female to female rs232 when i can get a cable and report back then. I’m sure Fortec Star will have been back to me with a solution by then……..Yeah!
BTW does anyone know what the “A5H” on the display means?
@Mike – I’m pretty sure it’s “ASK” – as in “ask Fortec Star”.
But I’m happy to report that a female to female rs232 null modem cable, a USB-Serial adapter and the software from the FS website has unbricked my receiver. I’ll post a short review of the changes as soon as I get time (I’m trying to get work finished for 2010!) but it fixes at least two annoying misfeatures and the zoom seems much sharper too.
@James Chapman – while uploading, my receiver displayed nothing, not CONN. Are you keeping the receiver switched off until the upload software tells you to reset the device?
Hi there, are there any upgrades via the net for this model, if so, how would I achieve such ?
Sadly Fortec Star seem to have deleted all the downloads from their website apart from one user manual. I’ve emailed to ask if we can still download the firmware from somewhere and I will post any reply here.