Living with the Dvico TViX HD M-4000 PA - the Mac and filesystems

I’ve had the TViX for 3 weeks or so now, and I’m still very pleased with it. The manual is very PC-centric, unfortunately, meaning that I’ve had to experiment and tinker a little to get certain functions working from my Mac. I’m going to document them all here in the hope that they’ll help out other Mac users who want to use this kit.

First up, file system formats. The TViX box supports both FAT32 and NTFS filesystems, but only FAT32 is read/write available on the Mac. If you’re only planning on using the box for watching video you’ve downloaded or ripped from DVDs, then this won’t be a problem - simply format the drive as FAT32 using Disk Utility’s ‘MS-DOS Filesystem’ option. However, if you’re planning on using the optional TV Tuner to turn the box into a PVR then this will only work with NTFS-formatted disks, which could be a problem.
I came up with 3 options, 2 of which ended up being feasible:

• Partition the drive, format a smaller first partition to NTFS for use for recording, and a second as FAT32 for copying data onto. Because NTFS drives will mount read-only in the finder, it’s possible to copy anything you’ve recorded with the PVR onto the other partiction for safekeeping if you so desire.
• Format the whole drive as NTFS, network up the TViX box and use the built-in FTP server to transfer data to it. This has the advantage of not creating the ._ ‘hidden’ files that Macs create on the TViX when it’s mounted as a USB disk. The disadvantage is that transferring over the network will be slower than via USB2
• The third, not yet feasible, option is to use MacFuse to install NTFS drivers on the Mac. This would be the ideal, but it seems that the current NTFS-3G drivers aren’t stable enough for my liking - there are reports of disk images no longer mounting once they’re installed and other things that make me a bit uneasy. When these drivers are updated, I’ll look into it more seriously as an option.

Of course, the first 2 options require you to have access to a PC, or an Intel mac with Boot Camp, to format the drives as NTFS in the first place. If you don’t have this, or can’t bring yourself to sully your hands with Windows, then the TV Tuner option is something you’ll have to live without for now.

Posted on 06.16.07 to TViX. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. 6 comments. Add your thoughts or trackback from your own site.