Hello!
Excuse me if this is not the right place to ask, but I bet on your experience, and have nothing to lose. So here it goes:
I have a Samsung LED 50" Smart TV model UE50H6200 (the full P/N printed on the sticker is UE50H6200AWXXH) which is very nice, but also very nasty when it comes to be used as PVR. As you may know it will perfectly read any FAT32 or NTFS formatted USB Flash drive or USB hard disk to play media from, but will refuse to record on these formats! To record you must format the USB Flash drive with it's own format (variant of Linux EXT4). The files produced are in SRF format and encrypted (even if the source is a Free to Air channel). The key is stored in an MDB file with the same name.
I tried the DeSTRoi application that supposedly connects to the TV via FTP and downloads the recording. Access was denied when tried to connect to the TV's IP address. It also claims to read the files from a local source, so I installed a utility, Paragon ExtFS to read the Linux EXT1/2/3/4 file systems in Windows. I managed to open the USB Flash drive and see the contents, but deSTRoi could not open the SRF files claiming they are corrupt. They play perfectly when I connect the USB Flash drive on the TV, so they are OK.
I then tried the Windows version of DRMDecrypt (is normally a Linux utility) to try and decrypt the SRF file into a TS file. When attempting to do that directly on the USB Flash drive, I got an error message that the TS file could not be opened for writing. I then tried to copy all the files from the USB Flash drive to my hard disk. I wasn't allowed to copy the MDB files containing the key, so I had to modify the syntax of the DRMDecrypt utility (it is command-line based) to read the MDB file from the USB Flash drive. It seemed to work! It read the SRF file, supposedly decrypted it and produced a TS file. Only that the file produced was not a valid TS file and no application could open it! Pretty useless!
Other applications tried: AVS Video Converter 9.1, NeroVideo 2016, TMPGEnc 5, Media Player Classic. None could open either the original SRF file or the "decrypted" TS file.
So now I have nothing else to try. Does anyone of you have any experience with Samsung Smart TV recordings? Is there any way to convert them to some other format (eg MTS or MP4) and edit them or convert to DVD? It would be nice to keep the episodes of my favorite series or even keep a good movie to watch again some time later. I don't think it's illegal as long as I keep it from my personal use.
Luckily I have a DVB-T set-top box which allows recording to a regular FAT32 or NTFS USB Flash drive and in the common MTS format, but it's a shame I can't use my Samsung Smart TV directly. If you have any useful information, please share!
Thank you in advance.
Please take note samsung new formate Sony Raw Format SRF. FILE ...NOTE Even if you could copy the recordings to your PC they would still be unreadable as they are encrypted. Whilst decryption is theoretically possible, they are further protected for Digital Rights Management (DRM) purposes.
Samsung isn’t alone in this though some smart TV and PVR manufacturers do allow recordings of some free-to-air (FTA) channels to be playable on a PC but they are in the minority. I doubt that it’s done to make life difficult for users. You have to remember that products like these are made for world markets and sold in countries where there are large variations broadcaster’s licensing agreements, copyright restrictions and local censorship laws. It would be very difficult for manufacturers to accommodate every possible variation so they take the easy way out by only allowing recordings to be replayed on the device they were made on.
Hi there
IMO the best way of doing this stuff is to connect an HDMI SPLITTER to your TV - then feed 1 output into a decent CAPTURE device - I recommend the Star Tech (USB 3 newer one) as you don't need to connect this to a computer -- it can capture direct to an SD card directly. It can of course capture to HDD on a computer if you prefer that.
The file output is m2ts but any decent software can convert losslessly to mkv / mp4.
I use this device to capture Video from a SKY Q minibox !!.
Note you need a cheaper HDMI splitter and DECENT HDMI cables - these strip off DRM too so your capture is fine.
Max resolution though is full 1080p (1920 X 1280) -- If you are trying to capture 4K UKD movies etc I think you'll have to wait until someone has cracked the DRM issues.
Cheers
jimbo
