DTH Explorer - home page

Requirements :

Windows NT or XP (may works on previous versions of windows, but it has never been tried)
An login account with administrator privileges (otherwise the Thomson disk can't be seen by low level win32 API functions)
One available slot on the IDE bus hardware to be able to connect the Thomson disk into the computer. (An hard drive removable rack can be very useful in addition)
A big computer hard drive with a lot of free space (more than 40Go free is not mandatory, but could be interesting to backup the Thomson disk)

Installation :

It is very easy. It contains no spywares, viruses, advertising.
It doesn't modify the windows registry.

Download the ZIP archive from the link above.
unzip it where you want. I recommend to create a folder : "C:\Program Files\DTH explorer\" and to unzip the archive inside.

Nothing more, your program is ready to run !
(it's up to you to create the various shortcuts you may want)

Known bugs :

Theoretical weakness in low level write/read due to possible bad memory allocation. (even if it only happens one time during developpement under specific conditions). However if it fails an error message is generated but no major consequences can be expected.
Status bar refresh doesn't works, therefore if the windows is temporarily masked by another application, once focus returns on it the status bar content is missing !
Sometime one video can't be imported due to a Seagate disk problem. The progress bar progression stop suddenly and DTH explorer hangs on !
Solution => Low level format the DTH7000 hard disk with Seagate free diagnostic tool ("diskwizard") to try to repair it (it worked several times on mine). But be careful !!! It will erase everything on the disk ! You will have to do a Thomson format at the end to keep it compatible with your DTH7000 (see note 1). If all your computer's disks (except the Thomson one) are NTFS formatted, the disk wizard floppy version may bug. Prefers download the ISO image file version to start diskwizard from your CDrom drive.

File table corruption bug :

I thought DTHexplorer has a bug here, but recent posts on the Yahoo's forum shows me that it's, in fact, another DTH7000 bug !
Sometime a videos is not correctly recorded by the unit. Instead of recording the 3 file tables section (1 per file = 2 IFO + 1 VOB) subsequently, it records only 2 of them and at non-adjacent locations, therefore the unit is no longer able to find the mpeg files and can't display it : In the video menu, it display the video thumbnails as static image, with no motion. When read on the computer with DTHexplorer, the size is 0, and the system file view shows only 2 childs in the associated folder instead of 3!
The bug effect is that you may "loss" this video record. Once it is lost, the only way to get it back and clean the disk is to import it to computer with DTH explorer (only in the system file view mode however), then import, as usually, all other videos you want to keep and re-format the hard drive !

Version history :

2.3.3 (10 nov 2005) =
- minor change : better comments inside option panel to select model name
2.3.2 (17 jun 2005) =
- bug fix : good file size estimation inside partial video save, if "other" sectors are chosen.
2.3.1 (30 mar 2005) =
- bug fix : Since version 2.3.0 info.txt and CellTimes.txt were not automatically created
2.3.0 (25 mar 2005) =
- default destination filename is fully configurable now.
2.2.0 (6 mar 2005) =
- Important bug fix : Since version 2.0.0 the video deletion fails (even if video list is reduced, the space was nor free)
- Adding of 2 new options : disable file table duplication (for debug only) and rename VOB file for future compatibility with my new software (demuxTout).
2.1.0 (23 feb 2005) =
- video save is no longer sensitive to DTH7000 known file table corruption bug
2.0.0 (21 feb 2005) =
- first version made to support DRC7005 model (instead of only DTH/DRS7000)
- video deletion is no longer sensitive to DTH7000 known file table corruption bug
- welcome message at first run added.
1.5.1 (11 jan 2005) =
- improve file table partial save windows (an extra customized segment can be add, and a bug is fixed about a bad size display for file > 2Go)
- bug fix : bad ini file location in some specific situation (effect = bad options loading)
1.5.0 (7 jan 2005) =
- improve option dialog (settings are now saved to .ini file)
- file table save is now possible for non Thomson hard drive (a default $1654 length is used)
1.4.0 (4 jan 2005) =
- bug fix : free space available above 24h
- correct progression display for partial video save
1.3.0 (2 jan 2005) =
- date calculation is corrected and is now true (see the specific page on that item)
- partial video save added, to save only some segments of a complete video
1.2.0 (30 dec 2004) =
- add an automatic creation of info.txt (various informations about the video) inside the destination folder
- add an automatic creation of a default CellTimes.txt (can be used later by ifoEdit for chapters) inside the destination folder
- remove the day column in the listview, but improve the date formating
1.1.0 (28 dec 2004) =
- add an automatic file table duplication at the disk end to try to solve the File table corruption bug (therefore the file table restoration from end is no longer available)
- bug fix (wrong path if root is selected as destination path)
- bug fix (wrong free space calculation if saving video inside another drive that the DTHexplorer installation drive)
1.0.5 (22 dec 2004) =
- add list of segments inside the property windows in the treeview
- bug fix (pop up menu if hidden, stay hide even if a new filetable is loaded)
- bug fix (The program sometime hang at the end of a save operation)
1.0.4 (21 dec 2004) = bug fixed (pop up menu disappears after a save is done)
1.0.3 (20 dec 2004) = First distributed version

I need help :

If you are interested in helping me debugging new feature or improving the existing one, don't hesitate, you are welcome !
Especially, I would like to meet some beta tester to help me developing a format capability that could also format bigger drive (above 40Go).
You are also welcome simply to report me various bugs that may happens.
This program is freeware. It give me a lot of work (I'm not a professional programmer), so If you like it, I will enjoy receiving your comments/suggestions.