New box won't play files recorded on older box

[trynhard]

I've had a HW150PVR for two or three years. The unit is showing some wear and tear and getting quite hot so I purchased a new unit this week. The new unit has firmware dated 2016. I set it up and tried recording files. It seemed to work okay so then I tried playing back one of the dozens of files I recorded with the old box. The old files won't play - I just get the Init screen then nothing. I exchange files with a friend and we've never had any problem playing each others files, even though his box is a year or so newer than mine. Is there something in configuration that needs to be set in these new boxes to play files recorded on older boxes? If not, is there a utility that can be run to convert the old file format to work with the newer box?

Now when I hooked up my hard drive to a pc, I saw all my old files as well as the new file but there is a difference. The new file has a matching .META file with the .MTS file. Also the new file has no file date and time and when I click properties in windows explorer it says the file date is Dec 31 1969! I used to sort my files in Windows explorer, to see the most recent files, and using date time instead of name got rid of the station name in sorting. Is there a way to get the file date and time back?

The second issue is minor compared to the first issue. If there is no fix for playing the old files on the new box, I will have to return it.

[ColdCase]

I've read over on the avsforum that the firmware for the two SoC chips (7802 and 7816) uses a slightly different format, rendering the recordings incompatible. The 7802 is used in newer boxes built this year, the 7816 in older boxes. The chip version is embedded in the box's HW version.

I haven't heard of anyone coming up with a quick fix, although you could use your PC to convert (transcode/mux) the recorded file into the movie file type and play them on either box as a movie type. There was some talk of simply renaming the files but dunno if anyone got that to work well.

Dunno why the dates are off. Are your drives NTFS formatted?

[dave2x]

I've been using a couple Digital Stream DTX9950s, but I just bought another HW150PVR a few minutes ago from newegg.com. I opted for the 3 year replacement deal for $8 more. Total cost $40.99

[trynhard]

Thank you ColdCase for your reply and the information. Chip code on the boxes was different and I compared this information with the box my friend(and his friends) have - all were chip 7816. I returned the box but decided to check around to see if I could find any older units. Most of the stores I checked had boxes with a similar serial number - the year code 16xxxx seems to be part of the serial number. (The new units also have a sticker on the box showing the serial number so it was easy to check.) As soon as I saw that, I knew the unit was unsuitable. I finally found an older model at a local Walmart (box had no serial number label on it). The HW version matched my other box(...7816) and the recording and playing of old recordings worked fine.
By the way, I saw earlier posts including one by Admin_mediasonic saying records could not be played on other boxes. These posts are dated before 2016 so don't appear to be related to the chip change. At any rate, when my friend compared his box to some of his friends, we found that boxes dating back to 2013 could exchange recordings with boxes purchased just last year. We also think that the model or software date is embedded in the software version number - i.e. 131012, 151006 indicating boxes from 2013 and 2015 respectively.

[antineutron]

When I was shopping for a replacement tuner, newer ones had v2, v3, etc. appended to the serial number on the box. These v2s played my older tuners' files alright so I counted myself lucky.

[Mathwiz]

It has gotten hard to find any of the old 7816 boxes, but I learned a trick to play old files on the new boxes. Plug the HDD into a PC and change the extensions on the old files from .mts to .m2ts. Then plug the HDD back into the HW-150, and you should be able to play your old files in the "Movie" sub-menu.