BM1000-HDMI (HDMI Encoder) Review

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I wonder if instead of an actual firmware change, if the OS is accessible via telnet or ssh, such that an alternative program/script could be loaded and run remotely after the device is up and running in it's own firmware. I do know that this is how the sagetv extenders are turned into squeeze players, without having to replace the firmware in them.

I was just trying to telnet (SSH isn't running) into one after I realized the firmware upgrades look like complete busybox environments. I can't figure out what the default password is though. It seems to differ from the web interface.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I was just trying to telnet (SSH isn't running) into one after I realized the firmware upgrades look like complete busybox environments. I can't figure out what the default password is though. It seems to differ from the web interface.

Did you try root, with no password... I hit a busybox device recently where that was the default setup

[Fuzzy]

just for kicks, i send an email off to unisheen to see if they can provide any insight.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Did you try root, with no password... I hit a busybox device recently where that was the default setup

I've been through a lot of default passwords in my day. This time it's username 'root' and password 'password'. I'm in!

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Did you try root, with no password... I hit a busybox device recently where that was the default setup

like the HD300?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I've been through a lot of default passwords in my day. This time it's username 'root' and password 'password'. I'm in!

wonder what sort of api's are loaded on the thing to be used. I know I made a 'working' network encoder script at one point in perl pretty easily.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

wonder what sort of api's are loaded on the thing to be used. I know I made a 'working' network encoder script at one point in perl pretty easily.

Considering the web interface runs entirely CGI, you're not going to find any convenient ways to run normal scripts on them and this box is slow enough that I don't think Perl would cut it anyway. For reference, my Raspberry Pi is more responsive than this thing. Getting it to reply with a URL when pinged by a UDP broadcast however should certainly be doable. Also wget is already on the device, so we have an easy way to get files onto it.

(none) login: root
Password:
Welcome to HiLinux.
None of nfsroot found in cmdline.
# uname -a
Linux (none) 2.6.35.7 #1 Sun Apr 7 14:08:36 CST 2013 armv7l GNU/Linux
# wget --help
BusyBox v1.16.1 (2013-04-07 14:11:44 CST) multi-call binary.

Usage: wget [-c|--continue] [-s|--spider] [-q|--quiet] [-O|--output-document file]
        [--header 'header: value'] [-Y|--proxy on/off] [-P DIR]
        [--no-check-certificate] [-U|--user-agent agent] url

Retrieve files via HTTP or FTP

Options:
        -s      Spider mode - only check file existence
        -c      Continue retrieval of aborted transfer
        -q      Quiet
        -P      Set directory prefix to DIR
        -O      Save to filename ('-' for stdout)
        -U      Adjust 'User-Agent' field
        -Y      Use proxy ('on' or 'off')

I did run into a problem though. I can only get into my BM1000-HDMI like this, my BM3500-HDMI does not use the same password and I'm still trying to figure that one out. The fact that the 1000 had a defined password gives me hope that the 3500 has a defined password too, but I'm a little less optimistic overall because of this.

[Fuzzy]

It would also, of course, depend on how they are accessing the video stream and relaying it to the end device.

Ultimately, I'm not sure if this wold work out the best, architecturally anyway, since it doesn't have any blasting capability, so it wouldn't work as a plug-n-play method of connecting a stb to sage, just curiosity more than anything at this point. Also, the thing is pretty pricey compared to a used HD-PVR 1212 at this point as well, so I can't imagine me picking one up too soon.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

It would also, of course, depend on how they are accessing the video stream and relaying it to the end device.

Ultimately, I'm not sure if this wold work out the best, architecturally anyway, since it doesn't have any blasting capability, so it wouldn't work as a plug-n-play method of connecting a stb to sage, just curiosity more than anything at this point. Also, the thing is pretty pricey compared to a used HD-PVR 1212 at this point as well, so I can't imagine me picking one up too soon.

I can't argue about the price, but it's not really the same thing. It's closer to the HD-PVR 2, but more reliable by my own experience. Even without the blaster (and there are plenty of applications that do not require a blaster), I still prefer it.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I did run into a problem though. I can only get into my BM1000-HDMI like this, my BM3500-HDMI does not use the same password and I'm still trying to figure that one out. The fact that the 1000 had a defined password gives me hope that the 3500 has a defined password too, but I'm a little less optimistic overall because of this.

The password for the BM3500-HDMI devices is 'neworangetech'. These passwords really should be public so that people will change them. It's very wrong that they have telnet enabled by default with a default password that the average consumer wouldn't ever think to change.

Welcome to HiLinux.
None of nfsroot found in cmdline.
~ # uname -a
Linux (none) 3.4.35 #1 Wed Sep 30 18:19:51 CST 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

At least it looks like whatever we might compile for these will likely be able to be the same architecture.

Edit: The 3500 has twice the ram and 4 times the disk space as the 1000.

[peternm22]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

The password for the BM3500-HDMI devices is 'neworangetech'.

I can confirm that the BM3000-HDMI uses the same password. If you want any of the specs for the BM3000, just let me know the commands to type in (I'm not the greatest with Linux), and I can let you know what it returns.

Edit: Here is what I found so far:

MemTotal: 91140 kB

# uname -a
Linux (none) 3.0.8 #6 Thu Oct 20 09:55:38 CST 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux

# df -a
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root                28672     11344     17328  40% /
proc                         0         0         0   0% /proc
sysfs                        0         0         0   0% /sys
tmpfs                    45568         4     45564   0% /dev
devpts                       0         0         0   0% /dev/pts
/dev/mem                     0         0         0   0% /tmp

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by peternm22

I can confirm that the BM3000-HDMI uses the same password. If you want any of the specs for the BM3000, just let me know the commands to type in (I'm not the greatest with Linux), and I can let you know what it returns.

The only thing that would be unique to your device might be the file /box/box.ini

That file contains the configuration for the entire device. The relevant line I'm interested in will have the URI you provided in the web interface. It will likely just be the path (e.g. /hdmi_ext). I'm planning on just doing something simple to provide automatic discovery and might be turned into an actual compiled network encoder for SageTV that can run directly off of the box. I have concerns that the box might not be able to keep up with SageTV's demands as a network encoder though.

I was looking at the upgrade scripts and it looks like these are 100% persistent storage. I was concerned that you might need to enter special commands to persist any changes made, but it looks like any new files you create should still be there after rebooting which means you need to be very very careful not to accidentally remove the line telnetd& from startup scripts or you probably won't ever be telneting in again.

[peternm22]

I found this in box.ini:

s0_http_ts_uri:/0.ts

Is that what you are looking for?

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by peternm22

I found this in box.ini:

s0_http_ts_uri:/0.ts

Is that what you are looking for?

Yes. Thank you. I won't get working on this right away, but if I can at least add a way to automatically detect these devices and a simple Windows/Linux utility to apply the configuration for the average user, we could fairly easily add support for these directly into the SageTV which I think would be the most ideal situation.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

The password for the BM3500-HDMI devices is 'neworangetech'. These passwords really should be public so that people will change them. It's very wrong that they have telnet enabled by default with a default password that the average consumer wouldn't ever think to change.

Welcome to HiLinux.
None of nfsroot found in cmdline.
~ # uname -a
Linux (none) 3.4.35 #1 Wed Sep 30 18:19:51 CST 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

At least it looks like whatever we might compile for these will likely be able to be the same architecture.

Edit: The 3500 has twice the ram and 4 times the disk space as the 1000.

That's funny. I was just logging back on here to tell you that the guy from unisheen got back to me and let me know the user and password as root and neworangetech. guess you got that already.. :-)

Now if only we could get silicondust to be so friendly and put sagetv network encoder protocols built into the hdhomerun firmwares.. ;-)

[Fuzzy]

Any probing on what ports are being listened to? Wonder if there is something built-in that might respond to a broadcast to provide proper discovery.

I'd hate to have to resort to a subnet ping looking for mac addresses or something, just because it's bad form.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Any probing on what ports are being listened to? Wonder if there is something built-in that might respond to a broadcast to provide proper discovery.

I'd hate to have to resort to a subnet ping looking for mac addresses or something, just because it's bad form.

I probed the ports a long time before doing this. There isn't anything that would reply to a broadcast. I'll have to roll my own solution which isn't really that hard. It's just some effort that I don't feel like expending at the moment. All I really want at this time is a UDP port listening for a specific set of bytes and when it receives those bytes, it replies to the source address with all of the video URLs defined on the encoder. It might not have been obvious, but this is what I was talking about earlier. If we then add support for this detection protocol to SageTV, then we don't have any reason to put a network encoder on the device itself.

Edit: Providing this ability is really the only reason I even care about being able to telnet into these devices. If they were already detectable by broadcast we wouldn't have a problem to solve.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I can't argue about the price, but it's not really the same thing. It's closer to the HD-PVR 2, but more reliable by my own experience. Even without the blaster (and there are plenty of applications that do not require a blaster), I still prefer it.

What do you mean that it is closer to an HD-PVR 2? The fact that it uses HDMI rather than component? I have been using the 1212 HD-PVRs for almost a decade and don't have reliability issues other than the power supply issues.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by wayner

What do you mean that it is closer to an HD-PVR 2? The fact that it uses HDMI rather than component? I have been using the 1212 HD-PVRs for almost a decade and don't have reliability issues other than the power supply issues.

Yes mostly just because of HDMI. In the past I was never able to get the HD-PVR to be 100% reliable. I had to power-cycle it about once a week. I pretty much abandoned it after the InfiniTV devices became affordable. Maybe things are a lot better now, but my own experience was less than positive and left me wanting something better.

[wayner]

I don't know if this is useful or not but the MythTV wiki has some info on these devices:

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/IPTV_Enc...Capture_Device