Just for reference it has a Hard Drive because it uses Freeview+HD which allows you to record TV via aerial as any other Freeview box. The added catch up / extra IPTV channels are via internet obviously. Also for reference these TalkTalk versions of YouView boxes have a smaller HDD compared to the Humax versions which have 1TB; probably because these come free with broadband contracts. BT also have their own brand boxes.
I tore down its little brother, the solid state one without the hard disk, its a very similar design, but with it seems only the 1 broadcom chip under the can, this was a BCM3461 which is a the DVB freeview decoder and has a MIPS R4000 core of some sort I think. The main chip under the heat sink was a tiny broadcom BCM7231 - which appears to be a 1.3Ghz MIPS core with an integrated GPU and lots of other goodies. Mindboggling how much horsepower gets squeezed into such a tiny space. And it had 2GB of Hynix DDR RAM onboard! EDIT: I realise now (after watching your BT Vison teardown) that yours must have two of those broadcom DVB chips cos it will be twin tuner - so you can watch one channel and record to the hard disk from another.
I bet its the 470UF 16V CAPACITOR top left corner usually is 9x outa ten.. Failing that its usually the 220uf 16v next to it or below it. change all 3 cheap fix . ive done about 12 same fault every time.. You did check fuse lol and short the main switch bypass . And try remote to turn it on (takes along time first go talking 5mins plus on a bad day).. Holding down power button goes to maintinence screen
Your model is DN370T, as seen around 4:38. There is a smaller one, DN360T which may not have a hard drive due to its size. I am not sure now, but when I know for sure I will edit this post, or write a new one. Also, it's easy to distinguish between DN370T and DN360T even on low quality image, because DN360T has yellow border around the Ethernet port. There are other differences as well, but this one is the most noticeable.
theres also a 500 gig harddrive in the old sky plus box's and most of the new ones now have around 750 gb and there all sata all you need to do with them is format just before you install windows and you can also get a sata harddrive from a freeview pluse box or almost any tv box as long as it recods
+Jake Thurston yes, there are many set top boxes with HDD inside. It just seemed a surprise in case of youview box, because i thought it was purely streaming based service.
+Jake Thurston yes, there are many set top boxes with HDD inside. It just seemed a surprise in case of youview box, because i thought it was purely streaming based service.
+randomtronic (Henry Farad-Ohm) it's a freeview pvr with on-demand services integrated in to the standard ui. Dual tuner (so 2 broadcom dvb-t tuners). iptv only with subscription via isp. also, firmware runs from flash, and it'll boot as far as the youview splash even without a hd (including running maintenance mode). i would have thought the hd was the problem as it seems to have behaved similarly to a device with no hd attached (i'm guessing you didnt try it without or with a different hd?). Also, no youtube support.
It's probably not possible, due to its size. This one is DN370T, but the other one, namely DN360T, is physically smaller. And probably there is no space for the hard drive to fit inside. Also there may not be a SATA port, and as randomtronic already mentioned - firmware may not have support for it. I'm still not sure, but it's must likely this way.
It's amazing what people throw away. I knew there were hard drives in them. Just get a little USB caddy for a few quid off ebay and it's another portable hard drive. People pay a fortune for those portable drives ready made too, I have no idea why. I would have grabbed it too if I saw one in the rubbish, or any similar TV box. People do it with computer towers and laptops too, just throw it all away when they get a new one, when there are lots of salveagable parts in them. Most people don't have a clue how they work, they think it's 'all broke' so they just bin the lot. When people throw out their old electric cookers too, I take the elements out and other parts. A lot of those parts cost a fortune on their own, especially the selector switches.
the hdd is only for recordings realy with a slight amount of cache needed to process the data, hence the slight delay on multicast streams even with a good downstream rate and ping. with youview all multicast and unicast services are streamed from servers of whoever is providing the service. sky works slightly different with its own unicast service on its own boxes, it downloads a portion of the video thats on demand first and then allows you to play, which works well if you have slow internet.
why is my youview soooo slow at changing channels? even just pressing the info button to see what im currently watching takes alot longer to show info box than i believe it should, the volume control also takes a few seconds of pressing it before it shows up on screen, its really laggy for changing channels etc however the box is still watchable its a perfect picture its just slow at using it, its connected to high speed internet and a roof ariel with an amp theres bot all wrong with my connection thats for sure.
Is the OS installed on the hdd and would I be able to put an ssd as a replacement for the hdd with the os on it (If it is on hdd) would it auto format ?
How do you take the content out of the TV Box HHD when its full before you reset it?? I was told you can do it via USB link -but cant get anywhere - Any ideas please?
Hi, I have one of these and it was working fine until I was given a new router by talktalk and then it stopped connecting to the internet. Talktalk have crap customer service that keep you on the line for hours without any resolution. And it was working fine without the internet and I was able watch Freeview on it and watch my recordings. But I did a “factory reset keep recordings” on it to try to resolve the internet issue but now when I switch it on, it doesn’t connect to the internet and doesn’t go beyond the window where it asks to connect to the internet. Any ideas why it is not connecting to the internet? I used different cables and different ports on the router. So could it be a faulty Ethernet port on the box? How do I check the port? Is there anything you can advise in way solution or diagnostics? Many thanks
Will it be mushrooms, fried onion rings, we'll have to wait and see. "I HOPE ITS CHIPS ITS CHIPS, I HOPE ITS CHIPS ITS CHIP, I JOPE ITS CHIPS ITS CHIPS, WE'LL HAVE TO WAIT AND SEE.
just a little tip for those of you who have these boxes, and are facing them, booting up, then the screen going black and apparently nothing else... I rescued one from the bin, when my next door neighbours moved out and tossed it, no remote or anything just like @randomtronic has, anyway, mine was doing the same, booting up, able to get into factory mode, otherwise taking 5 mins then black screen... Sooooo I took a chance, found a remote control on ebay for £5 (If it didn't work I can always use the remote with my USB remote kit) , anyway.... lo & behold... I think there must be some kind of 2 way handshake on the remote, because I had the box powered up on my bench, with it's black screen, and a popped a couple of AAA batteries in the remote, without pressing a button, and as soon as a clipped the last battery in place, the box's screen came on and started doing a set-up procedure. At first it complained because no Ariel, but once I attached the Ariel lead, it started to tune to the local Freeview signal, and now I have a working YouView box. So if it appears dead, first thing to do is to get a remote for it, it seems to recognize when the remote is close to it, so there seems to be some kind of wireless link, and the remote is no normal remote either, there's a strange 6 pin port marked "programming port" inside the battery door, so it would seem that the remote has some intelligence in it. Once it was up, I did a port scan from another machine on my lan, 5 ports are open, 4 of which I suspect are DLNA orientated as they give HTTP style responses, the fith one (6565) seems to either be UDP or possibly some kind of binary protocol. There is apparently an Android app in the play store for it, and I know from my exploration of Vestel Based TV's that 6565 or ports around that number range seem to be binary web socket channels for the remote, so in the coming months I'll be grabbing the app, reverse engineering it, and having a look to see how it communicates (Same method I used to break into the polaroid and other vestel TV models). My intention ultimately will be to fit the box into my server rack with an HDMI frame grabber attached to it's HDMI port, and some kind of VM based web app to control it, that way I can send control signals to it, telling it to record programs for me, then when done, play them back via the frame grabber into another system, and either watch them across my network, or record them to standard MP4 and add them to plex. Since Film 4 and Sony Movies are 2 of the film channels this box can get free, and since I have a good way of removing adverts from recordings, it would be a great method of adding movies to my plex library automatically.
The tuners in Youview boxes are trash - poor components and the worst shielding ever! After much fiddling i managed to delete the 5 Linux partitions on the 320gb hdu and got Kodi working almost perfectly! Gonna stick in a 3tb hdu next! Always worth dumper diving! Hate seeing electronics in bins too - I used to do it a lot in the old days and made quite a bit of money from it! The chips are the two Broadcom tuner chips! Why not repair it and use it as a freeview box and use the hard drive elsewhere?
+jason voor Hi, yes, it worked :) Just had to re-format it. You can use partition magic (windows) or gparted (linux). After that it works just fine, I haven't done any testing tbh, it just works. Good luck with your teardown!
Possible, but not straight forward I suspect. I think the challenges will be to mount the partition, and if successful, then there is the file format and codec used by the box - doubt the vlc will just play the files like that...
i could have guessed it had a harddrive or some kinda memory card it does have a record feature i can record on demand or set a timer for it to record that information has to be stored somewhere.
Just for reference it has a Hard Drive because it uses Freeview+HD which allows you to record TV via aerial as any other Freeview box. The added catch up / extra IPTV channels are via internet obviously. Also for reference these TalkTalk versions of YouView boxes have a smaller HDD compared to the Humax versions which have 1TB; probably because these come free with broadband contracts. BT also have their own brand boxes.
Free HDD? Now that's a bargain! ;) Great video.
+tehaiks It doesnt get any cheaper than this :) I am looking for a case on ebay now, or will make my own, will see :)
+randomtronic (Henry Farad-Ohm)
In that case, looking forward to watching new material about it soon! ;)
@Marshall Cruz definitely, been using kaldrostream for since december myself =)
I tore down its little brother, the solid state one without the hard disk, its a very similar design, but with it seems only the 1 broadcom chip under the can, this was a BCM3461 which is a the DVB freeview decoder and has a MIPS R4000 core of some sort I think. The main chip under the heat sink was a tiny broadcom BCM7231 - which appears to be a 1.3Ghz MIPS core with an integrated GPU and lots of other goodies. Mindboggling how much horsepower gets squeezed into such a tiny space. And it had 2GB of Hynix DDR RAM onboard!
EDIT: I realise now (after watching your BT Vison teardown) that yours must have two of those broadcom DVB chips cos it will be twin tuner - so you can watch one channel and record to the hard disk from another.
I bet its the 470UF 16V CAPACITOR top left corner usually is 9x outa ten.. Failing that its usually the 220uf 16v next to it or below it. change all 3 cheap fix . ive done about 12 same fault every time.. You did check fuse lol and short the main switch bypass . And try remote to turn it on (takes along time first go talking 5mins plus on a bad day).. Holding down power button goes to maintinence screen
My box is just booting on maintainence mode doesn't matter which option I select it will not recover any idea how to fix? Thanks
Your model is DN370T, as seen around 4:38. There is a smaller one, DN360T which may not have a hard drive due to its size. I am not sure now, but when I know for sure I will edit this post, or write a new one.
Also, it's easy to distinguish between DN370T and DN360T even on low quality image, because DN360T has yellow border around the Ethernet port. There are other differences as well, but this one is the most noticeable.
theres also a 500 gig harddrive in the old sky plus box's and most of the new ones now have around 750 gb and there all sata all you need to do with them is format just before you install windows and you can also get a sata harddrive from a freeview pluse box or almost any tv box as long as it recods
+Jake Thurston yes, there are many set top boxes with HDD inside. It just seemed a surprise in case of youview box, because i thought it was purely streaming based service.
+Jake Thurston yes, there are many set top boxes with HDD inside. It just seemed a surprise in case of youview box, because i thought it was purely streaming based service.
+randomtronic (Henry Farad-Ohm) it's a freeview pvr with on-demand services integrated in to the standard ui. Dual tuner (so 2 broadcom dvb-t tuners). iptv only with subscription via isp. also, firmware runs from flash, and it'll boot as far as the youview splash even without a hd (including running maintenance mode). i would have thought the hd was the problem as it seems to have behaved similarly to a device with no hd attached (i'm guessing you didnt try it without or with a different hd?). Also, no youtube support.
They have now have youtube. In the new update.
Thank you works great in my PC now
There is a talktalk youview box without the hard drive as well and great video by the way.
is it possible to add a hard drive to the one that hadn't got one
+aaron nelhams That depends on the rest of the insides and the firmware. Personally, I doubt it.
It's probably not possible, due to its size. This one is DN370T, but the other one, namely DN360T, is physically smaller. And probably there is no space for the hard drive to fit inside. Also there may not be a SATA port, and as randomtronic already mentioned - firmware may not have support for it. I'm still not sure, but it's must likely this way.
Thanks it just I want to record stuff but I have the DN360t nevermind I might just go with bt
randomtronic
Would you be able to try find a bit you view and take the one apart and compare them
It's amazing what people throw away. I knew there were hard drives in them. Just get a little USB caddy for a few quid off ebay and it's another portable hard drive. People pay a fortune for those portable drives ready made too, I have no idea why. I would have grabbed it too if I saw one in the rubbish, or any similar TV box. People do it with computer towers and laptops too, just throw it all away when they get a new one, when there are lots of salveagable parts in them. Most people don't have a clue how they work, they think it's 'all broke' so they just bin the lot.
When people throw out their old electric cookers too, I take the elements out and other parts. A lot of those parts cost a fortune on their own, especially the selector switches.
they usually take around 5 to 10 mins to boot if u give it time. try it if u still have it
+ItZz JoK3rZz thanks, but no, this has been disintegrated boy now... :/ I guess i am impatient :)
the hdd is only for recordings realy with a slight amount of cache needed to process the data, hence the slight delay on multicast streams even with a good downstream rate and ping. with youview all multicast and unicast services are streamed from servers of whoever is providing the service. sky works slightly different with its own unicast service on its own boxes, it downloads a portion of the video thats on demand first and then allows you to play, which works well if you have slow internet.
+Mr “MrNorth” North thanks for the info!
+Mr “MrNorth” North thanks for the info!
why is my youview soooo slow at changing channels? even just pressing the info button to see what im currently watching takes alot longer to show info box than i believe it should, the volume control also takes a few seconds of pressing it before it shows up on screen, its really laggy for changing channels etc however the box is still watchable its a perfect picture its just slow at using it, its connected to high speed internet and a roof ariel with an amp theres bot all wrong with my connection thats for sure.
Julian john ... have you almost maxed out the capacity on your recorder..(HDD) this makes the box lag!!
sandra matthias bullshit
Is the OS installed on the hdd and would I be able to put an ssd as a replacement for the hdd with the os on it (If it is on hdd) would it auto format ?
How do you take the content out of the TV Box HHD when its full before you reset it??
I was told you can do it via USB link -but cant get anywhere - Any ideas please?
Hi, I have one of these and it was working fine until I was given a new router by talktalk and then it stopped connecting to the internet. Talktalk have crap customer service that keep you on the line for hours without any resolution. And it was working fine without the internet and I was able watch Freeview on it and watch my recordings. But I did a “factory reset keep recordings” on it to try to resolve the internet issue but now when I switch it on, it doesn’t connect to the internet and doesn’t go beyond the window where it asks to connect to the internet. Any ideas why it is not connecting to the internet? I used different cables and different ports on the router. So could it be a faulty Ethernet port on the box? How do I check the port? Is there anything you can advise in way solution or diagnostics?
Many thanks
Wish my box tore down this easy.
There are a lot more screws on your box. 6 on bottom, 2 on rear. Mine has 3 screws period. :(
Rob Parkinson probably it is held on clips/tabs. pry it apart gently. it will come apart :)
Will it be mushrooms, fried onion rings, we'll have to wait and see. "I HOPE ITS CHIPS ITS CHIPS, I HOPE ITS CHIPS ITS CHIP, I JOPE ITS CHIPS ITS CHIPS, WE'LL HAVE TO WAIT AND SEE.
Made me smile :)
it has 320gb hdd? wow im amazed
That would explain the System start up error I keep getting. The hard drive is duff.
Can you get a stator cable that goes to a USB On the other end to turn any hard drive into a portable external hard drive ?
+Dole Bandit you need sata to usb adapter. Plenty on ebay for under £5.
Cheers
just a little tip for those of you who have these boxes, and are facing them, booting up, then the screen going black and apparently nothing else...
I rescued one from the bin, when my next door neighbours moved out and tossed it, no remote or anything just like @randomtronic has, anyway, mine was doing the same, booting up, able to get into factory mode, otherwise taking 5 mins then black screen...
Sooooo I took a chance, found a remote control on ebay for £5 (If it didn't work I can always use the remote with my USB remote kit) , anyway.... lo & behold... I think there must be some kind of 2 way handshake on the remote, because I had the box powered up on my bench, with it's black screen, and a popped a couple of AAA batteries in the remote, without pressing a button, and as soon as a clipped the last battery in place, the box's screen came on and started doing a set-up procedure.
At first it complained because no Ariel, but once I attached the Ariel lead, it started to tune to the local Freeview signal, and now I have a working YouView box.
So if it appears dead, first thing to do is to get a remote for it, it seems to recognize when the remote is close to it, so there seems to be some kind of wireless link, and the remote is no normal remote either, there's a strange 6 pin port marked "programming port" inside the battery door, so it would seem that the remote has some intelligence in it.
Once it was up, I did a port scan from another machine on my lan, 5 ports are open, 4 of which I suspect are DLNA orientated as they give HTTP style responses, the fith one (6565) seems to either be UDP or possibly some kind of binary protocol.
There is apparently an Android app in the play store for it, and I know from my exploration of Vestel Based TV's that 6565 or ports around that number range seem to be binary web socket channels for the remote, so in the coming months I'll be grabbing the app, reverse engineering it, and having a look to see how it communicates (Same method I used to break into the polaroid and other vestel TV models).
My intention ultimately will be to fit the box into my server rack with an HDMI frame grabber attached to it's HDMI port, and some kind of VM based web app to control it, that way I can send control signals to it, telling it to record programs for me, then when done, play them back via the frame grabber into another system, and either watch them across my network, or record them to standard MP4 and add them to plex. Since Film 4 and Sony Movies are 2 of the film channels this box can get free, and since I have a good way of removing adverts from recordings, it would be a great method of adding movies to my plex library automatically.
The tuners in Youview boxes are trash - poor components and the worst shielding ever!
After much fiddling i managed to delete the 5 Linux partitions on the 320gb hdu and got Kodi working almost perfectly!
Gonna stick in a 3tb hdu next!
Always worth dumper diving!
Hate seeing electronics in bins too - I used to do it a lot in the old days and made quite a bit of money from it!
The chips are the two Broadcom tuner chips!
Why not repair it and use it as a freeview box and use the hard drive elsewhere?
Please tell me how you got kodi working!
Hi did the hard drive work how did you test it. I am going to rip mine tomorrow as need the hard drive for my PC. Please let me know
+jason voor Hi, yes, it worked :) Just had to re-format it. You can use partition magic (windows) or gparted (linux). After that it works just fine, I haven't done any testing tbh, it just works. Good luck with your teardown!
jason voor
How do you view the recordings on the box if you put the HDD into a caddy
Possible, but not straight forward I suspect. I think the challenges will be to mount the partition, and if successful, then there is the file format and codec used by the box - doubt the vlc will just play the files like that...
of course it has an HDD its a embedded computer system
+Benjy Linux HDD is not a compulsory part of such system
i could have guessed it had a harddrive or some kinda memory card it does have a record feature i can record on demand or set a timer for it to record that information has to be stored somewhere.
i have a newer one and well i smashed it and i didn't find a Hdd but i havent opened it fully so ye
£8 a month for TalkTalk????? dream on......try £40 for the basic pkge....
😂 I found 3 Brown new TalkTalk box
TalkTalk Down to £4 PCM
You talk to mutch mate DO It.