What is needed to stream media from a Humax HDR to Windows Media Centre?

Question

I believe it should be possible to stream media from my Humax HDR-FoxT2 to Windows Media Center, or at the very least, Windows Media Player. Other people have said that it should "just work", although when I try to stream a ts file, even in Windows Media Player, it comes back with an error indicating that I need a codec (which, bearing in mind I can watch TV shows live on the PC, also from Freeview, it seems a little "odd").

Given I think this should work out of the box, and there are strongly worded warnings on the Microsoft website, is this just a configuration issue, or is there some option I need to install via Windows Update (or otherwise)?

Solution

It does just work, except ...

that the files are encrypted on the Humax. You need to unencrypt them before Windows will play them, this is true of plain Media Player as well.

You can do this in a variety of ways though the simplest is to install the custom "hacked" firmware and do it through the web interface that provides. There is even an add-on that will do it automatically called unencrypt.

The other issue you may get is that the built-in media streaming is not at all intelligent and tends to flood the network. You can get round this (again if you have the custom firmware) by installing the mediatomb package and using that to stream instead.

Go to wiki.hummy.tv to find out about the custom firmware and the available packages. I can confirm that it is stable and useful, I've been running it on my 6 month old HDR-FoxT2 for about 4 months now.

It's great to be able to catch up with episodes of NCIS and Stargate Universe on my laptop whilst my wife is watching the Apprentice!

Comments

[Justin Love]

Why can I watch them using xbmc on my laptop without having to worry about encryption?

[Julian Knight]

I'm not entirely sure. I think that you are suposed to be able to watch std def. files without unencrypting them but I found it doesn't work on Windows. I think that "encryption" for std def simply means setting a flag. Only HD files are actually encrypted.

[Julian Knight]

I have to say that UPNP and DLNA is a mess, full of incompatibilities. It's amazing anything works. I've found that the streaming features of Mediatomb are the most reliable.