encoding video for topfield pvr

Sometimes we use our Topfield PVR to play back video from 'other' sources. What I mean by this is video that it didn't record itself, which might be video from the web (eg. youtube), or recordings made on a linux box with a DVB card. The PVR is a TF 7100 HD PVRt Plus.

The manual for the PVR is a little vague on the subject. It says: "You can enjoy video files in DivX, vob, mkv, or mp4 format on the digital receiver." Not really any mention of codecs or container formats, and nothing on audio encoding. The unit has a USB port on the front (and another on the back) where an external hard drive can be attached, but according to the manual: "To copy files to the external hard drive, it must be formatted through the Topfield in the JFS file system. After this, the external hard drive can only be used with the Topfield PVR." Bad news for anyone not running linux (even heard of JFS??), but after some experimenting, here's what I've found actually works...

Video Encoding

Video formatted for iOS seems to work. I have a bash script that does the encoding using ffmpeg, but anything that can produce mp4 formatted video for iOS should be able to produce video that the Topfield can display. I experimented with DivX avi files as suggested by the manual, but as far as I know aspect ratio is not encoded into avi files, so the video was display in the incorrect aspect ratio. It would be possible to correct this during playback in the PVR, but I found that mp4 files displayed with the correct aspect ratio with no adjustment necessary.

Disk Filesystem

I use a USB stick, formatted in EXT2 format. The Topfield box reads this OK, using the USB port on the front. To write the video files to the disk you either need access to a linux box, or a linux virtual machine. I use a VM running Debian, on Mac OS X. It's a little slow, but it works. This should work just the same with an external USB hard drive, although I've not tried it.

Permissions

Last point, which seems to be crucial, is that the Topfield can only see folders and files that have root for the owner/group. It may not be necessary to have *both* owner and group set to root, but this is what I've found works. For example, here are the permissions on a demo video file supplied on the PVR:

---------- 1 root    root    65337872 Feb  6  2009 Alterna_Compilation.divx

Very limited, but the Topfield seems to like it. Hope it works for you.

For those that are still reading...

Here's ffmpeg's info on the video file supplied with the Topfield PVR. Make of is what you will:

~ > sudo ffmpeg -i /Users/foo/Alterna_Compilation.divx 
[mpeg4 @ 0x7fc78a029600] Invalid and inefficient vfw-avi packed B frames detected
Input #0, avi, from '/Users/foo/Alterna_Compilation.divx':
  Duration: 00:02:05.46, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 4166 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg4 (DX50 / 0x30355844), yuv420p, 720x400 [SAR 1:1 DAR 9:5], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 23.98 tbn, 30k tbc
    Metadata:
      title           : Video 
    Stream #0:1: Audio: mp3 (U[0][0][0] / 0x0055), 48000 Hz, stereo, s16p, 160 kb/s
    Metadata:
      title           : Audio 
At least one output file must be specified