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Finally got round to having a proper look at the poor LG RHT497h Digi-box that died a little while ago. It was out of warranty when it turned its toes up but decided to contact LG to see if they could offer any help, after trying their on-line support ( both form and live ) I was only guided to their premium rated phone line … But gave it a go. Basically could not get any help other than take to it an authorized dealer for repair, I could not even get the firmware from them to try a reinstall. Eventually I tracked down a European copy from a Spanish site.

Long story short I could not get the box to work again, but I have salvaged the DVD recorder and hard drive … Both of which work fine, so they have been put aside for my future project of an open source digi-box.

Of the four PCBs left I have to check the power supply to see if it can power my new design ( it works fine but not checked ratings yet ) but the one that interests me drives the HDMI output. If I can map the connectors then it will save me money on the final design as I can get a cheaper motherboard.

Quick update on the open source box I am working on, I have the basic design and features sorted out but need to test some ideas before buying hardware. So I’m going to buy a basic USB decoder, set up another Linux partition ( Ubuntu to start, but will be looking at ‘lighter’ versions ) on my notebook purely devoted to running as if it were the digi-box. This will enable me to see how any software runs on a real platform ( only 1.6Ghz ) in terms of processing the signal and recording to a hard drive. It should also show up whether going for cheap decoders and using the CPU to process, or go for a more expensive decoders that processes the signal and will enable a cheaper CPU is the best bet.

Stay Tuned