Samsung DVD-H40A HDD recorder internals.

The base area of the system is bigger than normal components for HiFi systems. So it overlaps quite a lot.

Power supply on left top. Warning, it's not covered, so could be dangerous if you still have system plugged in. So don't open the box if you haven't powered off the system for at least a while. The capacitors may still have enough charge to zap you.

DVD player left bottom.

Hard drive on right mounted above main circuit board.

This view shows the full mainboard after I removed the hard disk from it's location. The board is named: HDD COMB REV0 AK41-00021A.

The assumed major components

The areas in red show the what I think are the main locations for components on the mainboard. Included are: power supply, DVD player (MT1388E, MT1366F, EliteMT, FAN8727), MPEG codec (Cirrus Logic, Samsung Memory), TV tuner, HDD recorder (under hard disk).

(note: will have to update, as new information has shown that things are more spread out than I realised.)

This is the HDD recording section containing:

Altera Acex EP1K10QC208-3 - Programmable Logic Controller, something to do with file system support. Seems like the file system is FAT32 too.

ESS Videodrive ES6008F - DVD, MPEG2, CSS decoders. Reads stuff from the DVD player and plays it to the outputs.

NT5SV4M16DT-7K - Nanya 64Mbit SDRAM

AM29LV160DJ - AMD Boot Sector Flash Memory

LC74776N - Sanyo On Screen Display (OSD) controller

NEC chip unknown -

Gives settings access to:

Digital Recorder, DVD Player, Juke Box, Photo Album, Setup

Samsung 211

K4S643232E-TC50

2x of these on the system, located near the Cirrus Logic MPEG codec. SDRAM.

Partname: K4S643232E-TC50
Description: 512K x 32bit x 4 banks synchronous DRAM LVTTL, 3.3V, 200MHz
Manufacturer: Samsung Electronic
Package: TSOP II
Pins: 86
Oper. temp.: 0 to 70

ALTERA

ACEX

EP1K10QC208-3

Q DAA580213A

Altera Acex Programmable Logic Controller

It's underneath the hard disk and close to the IDE connector on the motherboard, and looks heavily connected to the ESS Videodrive, and boot sector flash drive.

Latest update: Seems this is the HDD file system support controller, which takes data from and to the Cirrus Logic controller via the IDE bus. See the Cirrus Logic or ESS Videodrive links to the Encore PDF. The block diagram should be self explanatory.

MT1388E

0219-AYO

MF3MF

DVD servo/decoder

Cirrus Logic

CS92288-CB ES

MTGHVB0232

MPEG-2 Audio/Video CODEC

Single-chip, real-time MPEG-2 audio/video CODEC with an integrated system multiplexor/demultiplexor and on-screen display (OSD) feature. Cirrus Logic link for the CS92288 chip.

*** Just found some important information that describes these components better than I can. See here.

It seems this chip sends the MPEG bit stream onto the IDE bus which the PLL (Altera Acex) puts onto the IDE Hard Drive, and does the reverse for getting programs off the hard disk. I don't think the bit streams are being CSS encoded. Only the ESS Videodrive has the CSS stuff, and it only gets bit streams from the DVD player IDE bus. But the codec support in this implementation of MPEG2 may not be the same format as popular DVD players on Linux/Windows.

EliteMT 72Mhz

M11B416256A

Memory. In close proximity to the MT1388E, DVD servo/decoder. Not sure what it's function is. Possibly cache for DVD playback? Maybe, maybe not.

ESS Videodrive

ES6008F T222

TTQDDC9430

*** Just found some important information that describes these components better than I can. See ESS Videodrive ES6000 series and it's block diagram.

MT1366F

0220-DPS

20870

Nanya 0214

NT5SV4M16DT-7K

11200APT

Next to the ESS Videodrive. SDRAM Memory.

Partname: NT5SV4M16DT-7K
Description: 64Mbit synchronous DRAM
Package: TSOP
Pins: 54
Oper. temp.: 0 to 70

Nanya 64Mbit SDRAM PDF

AMD 16 Megabit (2M x 8-Bit/1M x 16-Bit)
CMOS 3.0 Volt-only Boot Sector Flash Memory

AMD Link

Connected somewhere between the ESS and Acex. Used to provide a boot sector.

Partname: LC74776
Description: On-Screen Display Controller IC
Manufacturer: SANYO Electric Co., Ltd.

NEC

D78F4928GF

No luck yet on discerning what this is yet.

Possibly a EEPROM or something.

F N241

FAN8727

Motor IC Drive Controller - 3-Phase BLDCM + 4CH BTL Driver.

This drives one or more of the motors in the DVD drive assembly.

chip link

Winbond

W29EE512P-70

200916401

016GGRA

Slow infrared response rates.

I've been doing a little digging around for information on infrared transmission and reception, and here's what I found so far. See the following links for a good introduction on this subject.

http://users.picbasic.org/Howto/IR/info_for_anyone_interested_in_ir.htm

http://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/AN1016-D.PDF

I also use my remote to control my TV too, a 14 year old Toshiba.

This remote has been atrocious, always having to point directly at the PVR or TV devices to get it to respond. I remember having old remotes that used to have the signal get their when facing away from the boxes. But this remote never did do it that well.

So I went and tried a few things to figure out where the problem is. And I think I found it.

It's not the remote control. It seems to be the aperture of the receiver. I removed the front plastic cover of my PVR and the signal is absolutely fantastic from lots of angles throughout the room. Yes, some angles do get losses, but it's a hell of a lot better than it used to be. And the response time is definitely sub-second, not the usual 2-3 button presses I normally do over 2 seconds when the front panel is on.

As a comparison, my TV still needs direct aiming to work, but when I tested my original TV controller, it behaved the same as the samsung one. So it seems both the TV and PVR have covers on the panel that reduce ambient light reaching the photo diodes.

After reading the excellent explanation in that Onsemi document above, it all made sense. I understand why they make the aperture narrow, it's to reduce noise from other sources, but I think they probably went too far in this case.

Another old VCR I had was a Sharp brand, and that was brilliant with the remote control too.

I think I might have to have a think about how to get around this limitation in the plastic case. The following images depict the hole for the pass through of infrared signals. Note the interesting use of blue plastic as the filtering mechanism for the panel. Most panels use red plastic to filter out most of the non-infrared light.

The problem with trying to remove the blue part of the non-opaque component in front of the receiver, is the whole thing is one unit across almost 50% of the front panel. So trying to change this will mangle part of the looks of the system.

ps. So far I haven't bothered with changing this yet, I've just re-positioned the player to better receive signals from the front, and it's working ok for now.

This picture shows the infrared receiver dead centre below that blue capacitor.

A clearer indication from the back of the front panel.

It just dawned on me why the infrared receiver doesn't do a fantastic job in relation to the front panel.

Notice the space between the receiver and the edge of the display panel, it's about 0.8cm. It's probably too far back from the panel to receive enough infrared signal to function.

So the fix might have to be something like shifting the infrared receiver closer to the front panel.

I found the following web site came in handy when searching for some parts. chipdocs.com

Someone talking about their success in upgrading the hard disk using TIVO tips. I've left out the addresses for now to protect their privacy.

From: xxxxx xxxxxx <xxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx>
To : _Linuxsa <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 09:27:15 +1030
OT TIVO/SAMSUNG MPEG format

I have never forgotten Geoffrey's expose on the TIVO a few years ago.
I have just purchased a SAMSUNG DVD HDD Recorder DVD-H40A - 40Gbh. I have
successfully mounted the drive in my PC and transferred my MP3 and JPG
collection to it .I have added a caddy so that I can also mount an
alternative 80Gb drive. See http://x.x.x.x/samsung.htm
It plays the MP3 and JPG's perfectly and records on both drives as normal.
They both playback. However I can't find an application to play the mpg
files it records in on the PC. Supposedly MPEG2. I want to 'record' family
VHS tapes to the drive to make DVD's of them on the PC. Most Video App's just
pack up or give error messages.
Anyone any ideas or suggestions?
Bryan
Adelaide SA

So, it's in a Linux discussion, and he's talking about mounting partitions, so it's got to be a file system like ext2 or something similar. And the reference to the TIVO (A Linux embedded system). So it looks pretty good. I might have to take a further look into the TIVO fan sites. I never thought to boot up my Linux box to check the hard disk partitions and try mounting them.

Here's a link to some information from Bryan above, samsung dvd-h40a discussion. It's got some extra information on some who have actually mounted and copied media from and to their hard drives. I think I might try to mount my drive via my external USB drive caddy, will be interesting to see what happens.

And maybe I should date/timestamp this like a web log?

How I upgraded my hard disk from a Samsung 40GB standard drive to a Seagate ST380021A 80GB drive!!!

Yes, I managed to get it working. Went from 13 Hours HDD recording space to now having 26 Hours, though I do only use SHQ. My next step is to downgrade my WinXP from the Samsung 160GB to the Seagate 80GB, and upgrade from the Samsung 40GB to 160GB. Then I should get about 52 Hours. I think I'll keep the original 40GB as a backup, just in case. In the meantime, this is how I did it.

Assumptions about the OS (or lack thereof)

This system uses an onboard chip to control the system, menu, etc. So there isn't really an embedded operating system like Linux. We lucked out here.

Assumptions regarding the file system

It seems the Acex 1K10 controller seems to be handling the file system I/O, and is a programmed logic unit, using CASE tools to create whatever logic they needed. I think it also handles file sizes and free space calculations different to the usual operating system methods, so that when you mount it on a Windows XP system it reports incorrect information about the files that were created on the unit. I couldn't even copy files from the hard disk to my PC, it gave up with file errors. I was also surprised to find the <32GB drive pins were shorted for the Samsung 40GB original drive, but the unit uses more than that anyway. I also assumed they used Logical Block Addressing (LBA), rather than the old CHS (Cylinders, Heads, Sectors) method, though I can't confirm this.

The file system it uses is a FAT32, which is summarised as:

I wonder how it copes with movies that use more than 4GB. I haven't seen any like that yet, and maybe it just spans files when it needs to.

Mounting and testing file systems

I did all volume mounting using an external Firewire/USB2 hard drive caddy. The easiest way to check the files, but can't be used to copy partitions (later).

Mount 1: When I mounted the original disk on WinXP (with media contents deleted, and buffer off), the files listed were:

ts 1k

dummy_dma.junk 4096k

Mount 2: When I created a photo sub-folder and jukebox sub folder with the main menu functions, it added these (I remounted the disk on WinXP again to check):

photo <dir>

music <dir>

Mount 3: When I re-mounted the original disk on WinXP after I turned on the buffer and recorded lots of media, it had added the following types of files at various sizes, and there were the same number of mpg files to mapped files. So the buffer is just another mpg file and it's associated map, as well as any new recordings.

?.mpg <size varied from 0k to 3.7GB>

?.map 2024k

In all of the above cases, the free space is misreported, and I'm not sure if I trust the file sizes too much.

In the final case when the disk was mostly full, I noticed that Windows XP reported Used Space as 2GB and free space as 37.8GB. So obviously, the unit does not update the free space counters in the file allocation table, which a normal system would.

A repair (by Windows) on the hard disk is also not advised, as it may make the disk unusable in the unit. Only do this if you are on a test disk (already been copied), and the original is safe. I did this at some point in the past, and all of the mpeg's disappeared.

Edit: Have tried a hard drive check on Windows and it deletes all files, so don't try it. I tested this on my spare disk. The FAT32 partition on this system is definitely broken in many places.

Test booting with a blank FAT32 80GB hard disk

When I tried to boot the unit with a freshly created Seagate FAT32 80GB disk drive with no files, the unit seems to go seeking for files on the DVD player and the hard disk a number of times, then times out and powers off. I tried this many times and it got nowhere. So now I assume the engineers may have a boot CDROM available for maintenance, like re-initialising the hard disks, testing the system, etc. I haven't yet figured out how to create a "boot CDROM" for the unit. I also need some decent software to backup a hard disk to CDROM, but not all software can deal with the strange FAT32 state of the unit's file system, and may try to correct it and thereby destroying it. So, you really need to have a backup of the hard disk (probably the original one) if you ever want to get back to the original state, and only 'operate' or 'test' on the test disk.

One possibility regarding why a blank FAT32 partition didn't work might be that it needs a bootstrap file on the hard disk to initialise one or more of the programmable controllers on the mainboard (some of these controllers have their own internal processors and memory), so behavior of the system can be changed with upgraded firmware via CDROM or hard disk.

A warning about hard disk choice

After I tried the following procedure using a Seagate 80GB, I noticed that the startup times when I power the system on is longer than normal. It seems to sometimes time out and recycle again, eventually turning on. In some cases it didn't turn on.

This could have something to do with the spin up times of hard disks. I tried the original disk again and it worked within the limits each time and started up as per usual.

So maybe the larger hard disk spin up times are important. Possibly getting a larger Samsung might do the trick. When I eventually get around to trying my Samsung 160GB I will post the results.

And what I did to finally get it to work

(Note: See my entry from 28 Jan 2006 regarding an alternative method to do this which might be easier)

First, you need a tool that can create a FAT32 file system larger than 32GB with 32k clusters. Windows XP won't do it. I found a Seagate tool called Disc Wizard 2003. The Windows version failed to even run, but the DOS BOOT version worked flawlessly. Open the web site Seagate DiscWizard 2003. Get the DiscWizard Starter Edition which allows you to create the two floppies needed (one is a boot floppy, the other just more programs to load into a ram drive, generally E: drive). The software also allows you to initialise the >32GB FAT32 with 32k clusters.

1. *optional* Delete any shows you have recorded, and turn off the buffer, and the copy will be REALLY quick.
2. Shutdown, power off and disconnected my existing drives, both in PC and the unit.
3. Connected the original unit 40GB drive as master to IDE 0 Primary.
4. Connected the target drive as master to IDE 1 Primary.
5. Booted the PC with disk 2 in the floppy drive, at some point it will ask you to load disk 1 and hit 'c'.
6. Later it will ask you to load disk 2 again, and hit 'c'.
7. When it finishes, you can navigate around the menu using your mouse.
8. If you haven't already created a large FAT32 partition on the target system, larger than the original, do so now. Use the default cluster size of 32k.
9. Now go to the utilities menu and choose to copy a partition.
10. Choose the source partition on your 40GB original drive (Samsung and model number will be listed).
11. Choose the target partition as that one created on the target drive.
12. Begin the copy. Sometime later it will finish.
13. Exit the program and power off.
14. Reconnect your normal config on your PC.
15. (At this point, I reloaded Windows XP and mounted the new drive into my hot plug caddy, and checked what files were listed. Both "ts" and "dummy_dma.junk" were there).
16. Put the new hard drive into the DVD-H40A and power up, then hit the STANDBY/ON button.
17. It should recognise the files and come up into normal operation.
18. Go into setup and turn the buffer back on if you need to.

Note: If you have problems with startups, read my previous note about hard disk choice.

My next step is to try 2 drives, and to try upgrading to my 160GB drive. Will keep this site posted as to my progress.

(2 Drives - silly idea, no chance in hell)

(160GB - failed to work with the above method, result = never boots)

What about the CS92288 MPEG2 codec? What formats does this support?

Remember the files that are created on disk in mpg format are created using this controller chip, after going through the file system API.

The Cirrus Logic documentation for this chipset says it supports MPEG 1 and MPEG 2 with profile levels called MP@ML, SP@ML & MP@LL.

This unit also supports:

• IPB pictures CBR or VBR to 15 Mbps
• I-pictures only to 30 Mbps

This is quite a complex subject. I guess only under certain conditions will the decoders (hence software/hardware DVD players on PC's) will play back these files.

Another one is Berkely MPEG2 FAQ which I find really useful. Check this one if you want a good introduction to the MPEG2 standard.

The document whitepaperMPEG2 explains the various MPEG2 Profiles and Levels in a more easy to understand manner.

I found an article that explains the MPEG2 Profiles and Levels in more detail.

MP3 and Photo support

Yes, these are supported, but copying from CD or DVD to the HDD is notoriously slow and cumbersome. It might pay to copy your music and photo collection directly into music and photo subdirectories on the hard disk by mounting the disk under windows and just copying the files to the folders (create the folders too).

I haven't tested this for myself yet, but will do so soon.

The other thing which is strange is that the chipset on the DVD-H40A supports connection to USB controllers, but they haven't implemented it in this case. A shame really, as that would have been the best way to get these many small but difficult to transfer files to the hard disk more easily.

If you are going to buy a PVR with HDD and it has picture and music support, I'd suggest waiting for one that has USB to upload these files. It's just too damn hard trying to copy using a CDR.

Hard drive speed vs Heat

What I've discovered is that using a slower drive (5400 and slower) is probably a better idea than using drives with 7200 (or higher) rpm rates.

The reason is the slower drives still have enough performance, but produce less heat, and will probably last longer. Interesting concept. Especially, considering if you use the timeslip/buffer, the hard drive will always be actively recording and producing a lot of heat. Too much heat and maybe your better off with setting the buffer to 0.

The hard disk model originally shipped with the DVD-H40A has the following parameters:

Samsung SV4002H/NPS - 5,400 RPM (V series are 5,400, P series are 7,200)

Drive Ready Time 7 Secs.

3.5-inch High Performance Hard Drive
40GB Formatted Capacity
Ultra DMA 100 Support
7 way interleave OTF Error Correction
ImpacGuard TM
NoiseGuard TM
Read Seek Time - Track to track 0.8ms - Average 8.9ms - Full stroke 16.9ms
Average Latency 5.56ms
Buffer Size 2MB
Data Transfer Rate - Media to/from buffer(Max) 443 Mbits/s - Buffer to/from Host(max) 100 Mbytes/s
Non-recoverable Read Error 1 in 100 trillion bits
MTBF(POH) 500,000 Hrs.
Start/Stop Cycles 50,000
Component Design Life 5 years

(Seagate 80GB drive - omg, this device heated up to be too hot to touch)

Another dvd-h40a website I came across when googling

http://www.peter.com.au/pvrs.html

They also make note about a HDD recorder called a Strong SRT5290. So there does seem to be some choice in poor old Au, but we are pretty much behind the 8-ball.

Cool - check out these gadgets

http://www.deltrontech.com/products.htm

A whole bunch of stuff coming on the marketplace in the US and other places. Wow.

They even have a PVR on sale, not sure of the price yet. And they sell things like Firewire/USB to IDE adapters, so if you already have some external powered boxes with non-USB/Firewire, it might be possible to convert these to USB/Firewire. How cool.

Hard drive and spin up speed

I tried running my 80gb off an external USB drive, with a longer IDE cable going into the system. Hence, the hard disk is running all the time. Now power on's come up within 4-5 seconds every time. No more cycles and auto power off if it can't find the boot disk within the spin up time.

The Seagate ST380021A has up to a 10 second spin up time to the rated speed, and is a 2 platter, 4 head disk. There are 4 versions of the Barracuda ATA IV series related to the ST380021A, 20GB (1 platter, 1 head), 40GB (1 platter, 2 head), 60GB (2 platters, 3 heads), 80GB (2 platters, 4 heads). Obviously, the more platters, the slower the startup time.

The default Samsung SV4002H "Drive Ready Time" is listed at 7 seconds.

I tested the external power source for my 80GB and the system now had no problems starting up, but this is a bit too messy.

My other hard disk is a Samsung SP1614N - 160GB. The Drive Ready Time is reported as 7 seconds, so this should probably be ok to use.

What does this mean?

If the very large hard disks fail to work due to their slow spin up times, then providing an external power source may alleviate the timeout problem.

The 2nd option may be to allow longer disk boot timeouts in the firmware. I wouldn't know if this is possible or even how to do this.

Another option may be to try and select drives with <=7 second start times, i.e. with a single platter, 2 heads, and the highest density currently available. I would also assume a 5400 would have a faster ready time than 7200. The current generation of large drives have 40-50GB per platter side, hence 80-100GB per platter. The only single options I've seen are the 80GB 1 platter type (haven't seen 100GB drives yet).

It seems the Samsung series of hard drives are designed for a faster spin up time to cater for Audio/Visual application use, so they do have a range of 5,400 V series (I wonder if that means Value) available, because they are shipping them in A/V products around the world.

I got my Samsung 160GB drive through a company in Auburn, but had to get it ordered in (took 2 weeks). It was also cheaper than the other available 160GB drives by about $60.

Hard disk options

Maybe connect the internal IDE adapter to a USB2.0 to IDE adapter and pass a USB cable out the back to an external USB drive. Seems extreme, but it means power always applied to the disk, and an easy carrier for the disk, rather than trying to route an awkward IDE cable through a case opening.

I'm thinking that we need continuous power to drive the bigger hard disks, but connect it internally using the IDE adapter. So maybe putting a USB2.0 to IDE adapter on the back of the system, plus the internal IDE cable into this, and have the external USB cable go to an external USB2.0 hard drive in it's own enclosure (with fan). So we wouldn't get the spin up problem, would have a large hard drive, wouldn't have the heat issue, and a USB cable is easy to disconnect and plug into a windows computer to transfer files (mp3's, jpegs only as the mpeg files don't seem to transfer well). We could just leave the original hard drive internal (but not powered), if we ever have to get the original system running again.

(USB 2 drive, another silly idea, as I didn't think about it at all... :)

IR Receiver

Researching what types of lenses could be used to direct the IR signal from the front panel to the recessed IR receiver.

An Infrared Fresnel lens idea was suggested by Bryan Whetton.

I never knew this sort of thing existed. So far, there is heaps of information about these on the net. I'm going to try and find a local supplier and whether they would have a suitable lens with the correct wavelength, aperture, focus and will fit into the 0.6-0.8cm gap, and that little hole. Apparently Fresnel lenses are used in lighthouses.

The ideal one would be something that fits in the hole, and directs signals back to the existing receiver, with only the need to hold the thing in place.

(never did sort this problem out, as I didn't want to damage the system inadvertently)

DVD-H40A New method to replicate/upgrade the drive.

Updated: 28 Jan 2006

(See below for a better method)

I did try using the 160GB drive last year, but could not make it work at all. I needed the 80GB for something else so ended up going back to the original 40GB drive.

I had an email from someone recently asking how to recover a lost filesystem. While thinking about the problem, and the fact that the filesystem of the original disk is not compatible with any other operating system, I had a different idea occur to me regarding the disk cloning activity above. That is, using Linux and dd to perform the copy. This is at a block level on the disk and doesn't invoke any higher layers to deal with a filesystem structure. The basic building blocks of disks are the 512-byte sectors anyway.

I managed to perform a copy from the original 40GB drive to a 20GB notebook drive (with IDE adapter) using this method, and it worked!

Here's how:

Notes:

News Update: Upgrade DVD-H40A to bigger hard disks with ease!

Updated: 4th Feb, 2006

Source: Suave (Thanks for the email!)

Good news!

Apparently you can easily recover from hard disk loss or do an upgrade with almost no effort. Just make sure the hard disk is not formatted as FAT32 before inserting it into the system.

On the advice of Suave - who managed to insert a 2 NTFS partitioned disk drive, which then auto-formatted and recovered with the samsung fat32 filesystem - I then tried a single ntfs partition and it worked. I then removed all partitions (empty disk) and tried again and it recovered successfully.

My initial mistake was to format all the disks I tried as FAT32 before insertion, whereby it then failed to recover.

Once I clear my 160gb from the PC I'll try the operation on that one and let you know the results.

7/2/06 - 160GB results with above method. Failed.

I managed to make it work with the 32GB limit pins set to ON, but that means no more space than the original 40GB drive.

But it would not auto-format if in 160GB native mode (master pins set ON).

I did notice the partition size auto-created to 137GB, but it just wouldn't boot the operating system.

9/2/06 - 80GB results with above method. Success.

Using Suave's method - removing previous filesystem, and loading in drive bay - the 80GB drive managed to recover and format and operates successfully.

I should point out my 7200rpm drive gets pretty darn hot in the system, and there isn't enough room to fit a hard drive cooler. I think a slower 5400 Samsung 80GB drive would be better (btw, my 160GB Samsung drive is 10 degrees cooler than the 160GB Seagate, faster, and so much quieter).

Suave suggested a 120GB drive might do the trick. I've got some other people's comments to add regarding this idea.

MPEG format

Suave wrote - Eventually I found RecoverNT 3.5 which I used to save cluster ranges and play them back in PowerDVD. It turns out the format used by the H40A is standard 704x576@25i CBR 6100kbps MPEG-2 with 44KHz 224kbps MP2, which is not DVD compliant due to the audio sampling rate.

3/4/06 - 120GB results with above method. Failed.

Unfortunately, the system never boots (stays at Wait message). Thanks goes to Chay for trying!

Anyone game to try 100GB? :)