beaocup de droblemes avec le firmware!

Mon Francais est terrible.... sil vous plait I'essai ecrire en Anglais.... mercì!

I made some efforts to copy on the hard disk parts of my collections of mp3s that I digitalized from my 3000+ vynil record collection.
In doing this I am using some data DVd with some 1000 songs on each.
I discovered the following:

- after the first went OK (as well as a couple of cds of mp3 that I copied on the HD as well), the second gave an ERROR (space of file error it said). This was strange because the same DVD was well read by both my pcs. However the real probem is that after the error the music library declared itself EMPTY: no access to the previous successful copies! And this even if the disk space was still taken! Even WORSE, after that error ANY attempt to copy even a SINGLE MP3 on the HD ended in error!
It seemed that the music library was then completely unusable, however I could make it work again by reformatting the HD (press "RECORD DVD" et "STOP" simultanément pendant 5s). Of course I had to start from scratch again.....
So things stand as follows: a single, lone error in copying mp3s will result in all previous copies to be invisible, and to the impossibility to make any further copy. Only solution I found: reformat and start from scratch - imagine doing this after having copied thousands of mp3s......

It 's real nightmare: everytime you're copying some songs, you are also running the risk to lose ALL the songs you have already copied... a real thriller....!!!

After that I tried to copy the DVD 1/4 at a time, to see if it was a problem linked to the size of what was copied, or to the number of items. To do this, however, I had to select the 250 songs one by one, since there seems not to be any way to make multiple selections faster (At first I did not notice this because I used the select all command).
What's WORSE, I quickly discovered that the selection command is reasonably fast when operating on the first 200 songs, but becomes sooo slow for all further songs to be almost unusable: to select the - say - song n. 800 on the dvd to be copied it takes some 7-8 seconds.
And I had to select some 250 songs at this speed!!!!!
Besides, This did not work either since while copying the third fourth of the DVD I got the error again and so the first 2 fourths already copied were wasted as before!!!

I have now made a new copy of the DVD, and I have the whole copy in operation with the new master. I will know what happens in a couple of hours.... but I am quite skeptical.....

IMHO the firmware should be ASAP corrected to avoid this problems: or if you have a trick at least to make previous mp3 copies still usable when you get an error and to allow further copies without errors, I would be IMMENSELY HAPPY!!!!!

To end: as many others users I frequently had to witness Divx movies that had sound in the preview but failed to play sound in normal view. I must say that this is frankly unaccettable: it shows to the user that the machine is able to play the soundtrack but then refuses to do so.... it seems a bad joke! Again, I think firmware should be bettered ASAP on this!

Thanks for now, Andrea

Andrea Scagni a écrit:

IMHO the firmware should be ASAP corrected to avoid this problems

You didn't say which firmware you are currently using.

Sascha

Alas, unfortunately I have checked and the firmware is 5.31, i.e. the newest release as far as I know.
In the meantime the last copy experiment faild again, this time the copy operation freezed at the end - the screen saying "copy 100% completed - please wait" stayed there for more than an hour without anything happening. At that point I checked if the machine responded to any command, and it didn't. Thus I had to reformat for the fifth time.
If I do not receive ant suggestion from the Thomson helpline (I wrote them 2 days ago) or here on the forum, tomorrow I will try to copy the DVD 1 GB at a time using my USB 1 Gb memory stick.... who knows?
Bye Andrea

I also encountered the same trouble, while copying large amounts of mp3 simultaneously from a DVD. Once, the DTH turned blocked with the DVD, and I had a lot of difficulties taking it outside as each time I started the appliance again, it crashed.

The only way I found to transfer mp3 to the HDD with less hazard of failure is to use CD rather than DVD and copy a third of the disk a time. However, the library is a bit corrupted, as when you ask for a sort by artist, same singer appears several times. Besides, the more the size of the library increases, the longer is the delay at the end of the transfer: it seems that the DTH operates a defragmentation and rebuilds its summary of songs.

In conclusion, with more than 500 mp3, it starts becoming overwhelming !

I see.... Again I would say that the firmware still needs some solid optimization in the area of audio library management, both in terms of speed performance and bug cleaning.
Another thing I realized is that any mp3 on CDs or DVDs with a filename longer than 64 characters is not seen at all by the dth8560.... I did not notice it at first since deeper troubles took my mind away.... however this often means a third of the songs on a cd is not readable... I had to reburn the mp3 cds of a rewritable CD after having shortened all filenames to a lenght of 64.

However, for good or for bad, with really many trial and error efforts, I have now succeeded in putting some 4000 mp3 songs on the hard disk..... but it's true that the time the machine spends after reaching the "100% copied" mark before the actual end of the copy operation is longer and longer.

What can I say? WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO 5.4 FIRMWARE and hope programmers take our suggestions into account!
Thanks everybody
Bye Andrea