Bush Freeview recorder. B1TBHDPVR

[ReformedCharacter]

I want to download the contents from the Bush hard drive to my PC. Then be able to view the content. The majority of the recordings are SD. Very few are High definition recordings.

As advised above, try a live Linux CD:

https://linuxconfig.org/live-cd-dvd-linux-download

RC

[Infrasonic]

If you've got a high capacity USB flash drive or (even better) a USB SSD like a Samsung T5/7 I'd highly recommend using Ventoy to load up multiple bootable Linux utility tools and Linux distros, comes in very handy when trying to fix PC's/drives et al (even if they are Windows). A digital Swiss army knife...

https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

[16brae]

https://imgur.com/YUVNbnG

[Itsallaguess]

https://imgur.com/YUVNbnG

I strongly suspect that those large "rec.nav" files are the encrypted Freeview recordings, and that whilst you're able to see them, I think you're unlikely to be able to play them externally to the Freeview box they were recorded on, unfortunately...

RC mentioned in an earlier post that your Bush box is likely to be a re-badged Vestel T7650, and if that's the case then there's mention on AVForums regarding that particular box using encrypted files -

https://www.avforums.com/threads/logik-freeview-hd-pvr-re-encoding.1878907/

If you don't get anywhere with this, then it's probably going to be more fruitful for you to perhaps seek out an alternative viewing source for the programmes on the drive, and if you were happy to mention which programmes they were, then I'm sure we can perhaps help with that option instead, if you think it's one you might want to pursue.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[16brae]

Thank you for your help. I don't remember all the films and programs on the drive. There was a lot there. Could you give me some alternative viewing platforms, if I cannot view them via my PC. Thank you.

[swill453]

Thank you for your help. I don't remember all the films and programs on the drive. There was a lot there. Could you give me some alternative viewing platforms, if I cannot view them via my PC. Thank you.

There's all the usual ones, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV and so on. Obviously a lot of them will involve a cost.

Scott.

[servodude]

Thank you for your help. I don't remember all the films and programs on the drive. There was a lot there. Could you give me some alternative viewing platforms, if I cannot view them via my PC. Thank you.

There's all the usual ones, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV and so on. Obviously a lot of them will involve a cost.

Scott.

I'm not sure that was the question (but it's certainly the way I would go )

I'm also not sure if it would be possible to put the drive in to a different recorder of the same model - as it will depend on how the keying was done for the encryption (quick check suggests an AES 128 scheme tied to the box )

[swill453]

I'm not sure that was the question

I was following up Itsallaguess's suggestion to "seek out an alternative viewing source for the programmes".

Scott.

[Infrasonic]

Unless someone has a viable suggestion for how to break the encryption ( ) I think the reality is it would be best to reformat the drive and stick it in something else/USB case.

[16brae]

Yes. I thought there would be something available that would break any encryption and let me download the files to my PC to view. Without any problems.

[Infrasonic]

Yes. I thought there would be something available that would break any encryption and let me download the files to my PC to view. Without any problems.

The only way decent encryption generally gets broken is if there is some flaw in the math or someone has been sloppy with the official decryption key side of things (Microsoft were in the news recently for an Azure cloud vulnerability due to this) ... brute forcing AFAIK is not a realistic proposition yet for AES 128/256 (quantum computing speculation notwithstanding ).

[didds]

Yes. I thought there would be something available that would break any encryption and let me download the files to my PC to view. Without any problems.

apologies if this was said before - I have skimmed the thread etc ...

You may be able to unencypt/break the encryption, but unless you then have an app that will handle whatever format the files are in its all somewhat redundant.

[Itsallaguess]

Thank you for your help. I don't remember all the films and programs on the drive. There was a lot there. Could you give me some alternative viewing platforms, if I cannot view them via my PC.

There's all the usual ones, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV and so on.

Obviously a lot of them will involve a cost.

A good aggregator to check which platforms films or series are on, and any costs involved, is the JustWatch site -

https://www.justwatch.com/uk

An example here for the film Inception, showing the various viewing options available - https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/inception

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Itsallaguess]

Yes. I thought there would be something available that would break any encryption and let me download the files to my PC to view. Without any problems.

The only way decent encryption generally gets broken is if there is some flaw in the math or someone has been sloppy with the official decryption key side of things

There were a couple of strong reasons that I went with a Humax box for my last HD Freeview recorder.

One was that you can FTP straight into the box hard-drive over your home network, gaining access to the recorded files via a file-explorer window without any hassle of digging hard-drives out.

The other was the existence of a PC file-utility called 'Foxy', which changes the 'Encrypted' flag on any relevant in-box HD recordings, which then enables me to use the Humax box to transfer any HD in-box recording to a USB stick via it's USB port, which would normally only be possible with SD recordings...

It isn't so much 'cracking' the HD encryption, but simply convincing the box itself that HD recordings were SD recordings, and so conning the box into carrying out the conversion to the USB drive when it normally wouldn't...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[16brae]

Would it be possible for me to purchase a secondhand freeview recorder from ebay. Take out the existing hard drive in that recorder, and then replace it with my own hard drive from my Bush recorder? Would I be able to view my recordings doing this? If so, would I then be able to connect that recorder to my PC in some way, to view those recordings?

[servodude]

Would it be possible for me to purchase a secondhand freeview recorder from ebay. Take out the existing hard drive in that recorder, and then replace it with my own hard drive from my Bush recorder? Would I be able to view my recordings doing this? If so, would I then be able to connect that recorder to my PC in some way, to view those recordings?

It's not clear if that would work.
It depends on whether the key for the encryption is a function of the design or the unit.
I haven't been able to discern this from the googling I've done

[Infrasonic]

Would it be possible for me to purchase a secondhand freeview recorder from ebay. Take out the existing hard drive in that recorder, and then replace it with my own hard drive from my Bush recorder? Would I be able to view my recordings doing this? If so, would I then be able to connect that recorder to my PC in some way, to view those recordings?

It's not clear if that would work.
It depends on whether the key for the encryption is a function of the design or the unit.
I haven't been able to discern this from the googling I've done

Even though many TV boxes are 'badged' with the same hardware as other brands, often there'll be customised tweaks to the firmware which makes it a complete lottery without accurate technical documentation.

It's a rabbit hole that I would only go down if you have the technical chops to know what you are looking for and the time to commit to it.

There's YT videos on all sorts of things that would generally be considered very difficult to impossible, but the required skills have taken years for the creators to acquire.

[16brae]

https://imgur.com/ZZFUNeL
I have managed to copy the contents from my Bush freeview recorder drive, to an internal drive in my PC. I have included a screenshot of what I am seeing. Is it possible to convert these chunk files to AVI or some other format where the files can be viewed?

[swill453]

https://imgur.com/ZZFUNeL
I have managed to copy the contents from my Bush freeview recorder drive, to an internal drive in my PC. I have included a screenshot of what I am seeing. Is it possible to convert these chunk files to AVI or some other format where the files can be viewed?

As far as people here have been able to determine, it seems the answer is going to be no, due to them highly likely to be encrypted.

Scott.

[Redmires]

https://imgur.com/ZZFUNeL
I have managed to copy the contents from my Bush freeview recorder drive, to an internal drive in my PC. I have included a screenshot of what I am seeing. Is it possible to convert these chunk files to AVI or some other format where the files can be viewed?

As far as people here have been able to determine, it seems the answer is going to be no, due to them highly likely to be encrypted.

Scott.

Sorry to say 16brae but everyone is pointing to the fact that these files are encrypted and cannot be viewed. And it is very unlikely that you can view these on another PVR (even the same model version) as the encryption is tied to a chip on the main board, as is the case with Humax.

https://wiki.hummy.tv/wiki/Encryption

Humax's can be modded to get round encryption, as a previous post suggest but there's nothing similar for a Bush

I think it would be better for you to post a question on the AVForums board as there are some real experts who hang out there.

https://www.avforums.com/forums/digital ... orders.47/