ExPVR not working

[geoffwba]

Has anyone had any experience of using this software recently? I can't get it to work with my DRX895 box. The software finds the Sky Box files but refuses to copy them to my PC, throwing up an error message. The log file throws up several corruption messages. Another issue is that ExPVR doesn't recognise my Darwin Planner database which is version 2.115. I have submitted my problem to the forums on their website but can't get any answers and having paid £19.99 for the software I am not happy ( in hindsight I should have gone for the trial version instead).
When the Sky hard drive is connected to my PC and I select the option to check the disk for errors it does throw up a message saying there are errors, with an option to repair under Windows. I don't know whether doing this would wipe the programmes in the planner. I know I can reset the Sky Box through Sky but I would of course lose all my recordings.

[seawright]

Don't allow Windows to repair the disk. It recognises the disk as a standard FAT32 disk which it isn't. Any attempt to repair the disk will damage the video files irrecoverably.

ExPVR has not been updated for some time but there have been changes to the planner database which ExPVR is not aware of. This has causes ExPVR to report disk errors. Initially in most cases this did not prevent copying but recent changes may have completely broken ExPVR.

Mat, the programmes author, has not been answering messages for some time. You could try to recover your payment though Pay Pal or which ever card company you used to make the payment.

[geoffwba]

Don't allow Windows to repair the disk. It recognises the disk as a standard FAT32 disk which it isn't. Any attempt to repair the disk will damage the video files irrecoverably.

ExPVR has not been updated for some time but there have been changes to the planner database which ExPVR is not aware of. This has causes ExPVR to report disk errors. Initially in most cases this did not prevent copying but recent changes may have completely broken ExPVR.

Mat, the programmes author, has not been answering messages for some time. You could try to recover your payment though Pay Pal or which ever card company you used to make the payment.

Thanks for your input. I wondered why the disk shows up as FAT32. I paid through Paypal so if I can't get a response from Mat at Expvr, I will take steps to raise a transaction dispute and try to recover my money. Basically, if they haven't got time to keep the software up to date, their product is not fit for purpose.

[Xizor]

Hi all,

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but does anyone know if ExPVR is still being supported?

I've just given up Sky after 16 years and wanted to copy a few recordings off my old Sky+ HD box before I scrap it. I've removed the HDD and the free version of ExPVR seems to work fine in a limited way, but I'm a bit reluctant to pay £20 for the full version if it's not supported any more.
Trouble is, I can't find any other way of doing it.

Is there any other way?

Thanks for any info

[seawright]

If your Sky Box is in a playable condition you could use a HDMI video capture card/device to transfer videos from the Sky Box to a PC.
Not the cheapest option as HD device prices start at £80 though analogue SD devices can be obtained for less. A hardware option has the advantage that any programme that can be played on a TV set can be transferred. It doesn't matter whether the recording is encrypted or free to air.
ExPVR and any other software solution can only download free to air recordings.

If you don't want to spend any money you could take a look at this project on Source Forge:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/xtvfs/
It is only alpha software so there are no guarantees that it will work. Even if it does work only free to air recordings will be playable and the recovered files will have file names that bear no relationship to the original programme titles.

[Xizor]

Thanks for the reply seawright,

My Sky contract ended a few days ago, so my box will not playback any recordings now. I find that very irritating. I can understand it for the subscription channels but not for the FTA channels. Anyway, that's another story. I didn't want to copy in real time.

I did see the Linux XTVFS project. That could be an option if I knew anything about Linux! Is there a guide anywhere on how to run it?

Ideally, I would like to use ExPVR, but I feel £20 is too much for an old, unsupported piece of software. If it was £5 I'm sure he would sell many more copies.

Anyone willing to sell me a full version they don't use anymore?

[christopherw]

I just bought and used ExPVR; it almost worked flawlessly - one error which caused a bulk copy to fail until I deselected a specific recording - I suspect it may have been due to some planner corruption for that specific programme. Aside from that it copied everything OK and all FTA TSes were exportable to my PC HD. ExPVR complained about my planner database version being on 2.132.

Buy it and try it. If it doesn't work, dispute through PayPal; as long as you follow the process explaining the goods did not work as described and no support from the vendor is forthcoming, you should be able to get a refund. Don't just issue a chargeback through your bank as PayPal start to get very snippy about that.

I suspect you can't reuse a purchased key as when I registered it generated a unique reference which looked to be tied to my specific machine. I also had to input my PayPal transaction ID (as provided by an email from his site) and the licence key also supplied. I bet it's not reusable on another machine.

[The Artful Dodger]

Hello, all:

I am interested in the thoughts in this thread because for some time I have been planning on transferring all of the files on an old 2TB box to the HDD of a new HDD box (with WiFi) that SKY was nice enough to give me (didn't even charge me postage!!). I have a paid copy of the current version of ExPVR but now I'm having second thoughts. I, too, tried to contact the author and received no answer. I thought the guy was just rude. Now I'm thinking maybe he was paid-off by SKY not to support the program any more? I can't believe the use of that software by the few with the inclination to do so would have bit into their profits enough to worry about!

Another thing I have wondered about is the USB connector; I seem to remember that, in the past at least, it has been able to transfer information from the HDD using that connector - has anyone checked to see if it's connected again?

After reading the thread, I am quite depressed! The only other way I have to get things off the box is, at real time, to play (copy?) the files (in SD) and record them onto an HDD Recorder I have and thence to a DVD and thence to a different HDD Video player I have. What a bore that would be!

I hope someone out there can cheer me up with some good news!

All the best and here's hoping!


Sparky

As an aside, are there any budding hackers out there that wants to decompile the ExPVR software and thence fix it for current use? Just a thought. 8>))

[seawright]

Another thing I have wondered about is the USB connector; I seem to remember that, in the past at least, it has been able to transfer information from the HDD using that connector - has anyone checked to see if it's connected again?

The USB connector was only ever enabled for the Sky mini Wi-Fi adaptor and I doubt that would work on boxes with built in Wi-Fi. You may be thinking of the eSATA socket which for a short time did support external hard disk drives but once Sky had been alerted to this fact the next firmware upgrade removed this feature which (rightly or wrongly) Sky regarded as a security breach.

[smurf]

All

By way of update to this thread, I've just tried exPVR this weekend and it's failing to load and use the Darwin database. It won't go beyond that point, so I assume there has been some change to the database recently that means it can't be read at all.

Next step for me....try a full reset of the sky box