Receiving Free Over-The-Air (OTA) HDTV With a USDTv Box
15. Jan, 2008 
10 Comments
Before hearing anything about USDTV, I had bought a USDTV box on craigslist for like $30 bucks. I took it home and hooked it up to my projector, expecting HDTV bliss and to my supprise, the screen was stuck saying that it could not pick up a USDTV signal. I was pretty frustrated and immediately fired of an angry email to the person that sold me the box (they told me I should have no problem). Of course they did not respond and I had to find an alternative. So after searching the far reaches of the internet, I found a tutorial that detailed how to patch the box on your own. In this post, I just was to reiterate the tutorial and express some of the troubleshooting that I had to do along the way. The original tutorial can be found here. So if you can pick one of these things up for cheap, I encourage it. They are fairly easy to patch.
As some of you may know USDTv was a company that delivered HDTV over the air. This company was a decent idea before most channels started broadcasting in HD. Basically their users paid a subscription fee to this service and received USDTv digital channels as well as some OTA channels.The cost of this service was $19.95 per month. Some additional channels could be added for an additional fee. After going out of business in March of 2007, they left their 14,000+ subscribers with a box that was basically worthless. Just as they declared bankruptcy, they released a patch for their boxes that enabled them to work free from a subscription. This patch was sold to a small company that charged quite a large fee to send you a USB stick with the patch installed.
Now onto the H4X0r
Here is a list of everything that you need to make the patch work
- A computer running your favorite flavor of Linux (I would reccommend Fedora Core as it has many drivers and will mount your USB stick on its own)
- A USB stick (probably at least a Gig)
- Download this file
Once you have all of this in check, we are ready to begin…
One thing that I will try to do in this tutorial is to cover all of the bases. I would not quite consider myself a linux guru, so it took me a little bit of troubleshooting to get this working. I will try to answer all questions that I receive.
Here we go…
- Step 1
Unzip both of the files into a directory that you can easily find (probably /home/yourusername). - Step 2
Insert your USB stick. Don’t mount it! If your system automatically mounts it (Fedora will do this) you need to unmount it. If you don’t know how to do this, this link will provide some insight. - Step 3
Create a folder inside of the /mnt folder called usb_flash. To do this, open the terminal and type the commands:
cd /mnt
mkdir usb_flash
chmod 777 usb_flash
This will be the mount point for our script - Step 4
In the terminal, navigate to the directory where you unzipped the files. If you unzipped them to the directory specified above, simply type
cd /home/yourusername/FTA_conversion - Step 5
Run the following command
./makekey usdtv_fta.fromService.2.7.15.0602031002.keychain.tar.gz
What this command does is runs the make key script. Here is the breakdown of the script. – It scans your computer for the location of the USB stick
- When it finds the stick, it mounts it in the /mnt/usb_flash folder
- The USB stick is then formatted using the /sbin/fdisk command
- The drive is then given the ext2 partition using the mke2fs command
- It then untars the file onto the disk
- Lastly it does some nerdyness with MD5 and unmounts the stickWhen this process is completed you will see a message that says Keychain successfully created. You may remove the USB drive now. If it fails for any reason, it will spit out some errors. You can see all of the shell code for this script by typing in emacs makekey - Step 6
- Unplug your USDTV box
- Insert the USB stick into the back of your USDTv box
- Plug in the power cord and turn on the box
- The update will begin immediately
- When it is done, it will tell you it is safe to unplug your box. Unplug the box and remove the USB stick from the back of the box and plug it back in
- After all is complete, it will do a channel scan and some config and you are done!
Troubleshooting
Here I will post the problems that I encountered. I will post more here as people submit issues.
Error: A keychain is already mounted, exiting – This error occurs when your USB stick is already mounted. If you get this error you need to unmount the stick
Error: mke2fs: Command not found. – This is because the script is calling the command like mke2fs, on some system this command cannot be accessed like this. To fix this you will need to open the makekey file (emacs makekey) and edit it the line that says mke2fs $partition >>$logfile 2>&1
Change this line to /sbin/mke2fs $partition >>$logfile 2>&1 and press Ctrl-x Ctrl-s (Save command for emacs). Run the scrip again and this should fix it.
If you don’t feel like creating the patch yourself, or are just having too much trouble, message me and I can do it for you for cheap. Good Luck!.
I am having problems creating the key. Everytime I try to run the script it comes back with the message “Unable to umount /dev/sdb1, exiting”
When I look at the log it says the device is busy. If I go back into the terminal and umount it by myself it works. It is almost like the script is not allowing enough time for the usb_drive to stop writing to its self.
Any ideas?
Matt, at what point does the script display this message. Could you please paste your output? Thanks.
-Brandon
There are updates to the firmware located at:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=5022af3ae69122e24012e8015643d9c8b112cc0853efd9eb
There is also a good thread about this box at:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=479882&pp=30&page=34
BTW – very nice clean website. Thanks for putting it together.
Who do I contact to just purchase the USB key to revamp my USDTV box for free OVA reception?
I don’t have access to Linux based computer. And even if I did I’m not tech savvy enough to make the USB key correctly on my own.
John
I have tried everthing to switch my db 2010 to free over the air and my USDTV box will not work I plug
it in but it will not read the usb stick. I made the usb with Ubunto Any suggestions?? or orhter help
available??
Harry
JOHN – check out the forum an link above. There are files that will convert it. http://www.proserv1.com also sells some USB sticks that will upgrade you. Post on the avsforum or I will try and check back here. Tell what version you are on. If you have a subscription box, the only way today is to buy a key from proserv1 or to get a friend with linux. Or post with your details and I’ll see what I can do to help you out.
Brandon,
I will paste my output when I have time to run it again. Sorry I haven’t looked at the board for a little while.
Matt
Matt – I placed a fromService293.zip at the mediafire location:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=5022af3ae69122e24012e8015643d9c8b112cc0853efd9eb
look under the windows folder for the fromService293.zip file. It contains an image and a dd command for windows. Follow the steps in the readme. There are files on the mediafire location for linux and windows to upgrade from a service box as well as upgrade an existing FTA box.
I’ve downloaded the zipped file into a folder on my windows xp machine, not linux. Can I still perform the procedure? If so, what differences will there be? If not, can I install a Linux emulator on my XP machine & go that route?
You need to see what version you have on your box. If you have 2.7.15 or later, you need to download the windows FAT zip file and follow those instructions. The active forum for this is:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16946322#post16946322
Good luck!