6. Transferring Files: Two Lessons Learned

We learned two very important lessons about transferring files to the H140. First, use an SD card if you can, not a USB connection. Second, most files can't be moved by simply dragging them from your PC to the H140 - they must first be processed using the device's PC-based conversion program.

You can only connect the H140 PVR to a USB port on your computer when the PVR is on. We tried connecting with the device turned off and then turning it on as you do with most USB devices, with no luck. The H140 was recognized by the computer as a mass storage device, but Windows XP threw an error message saying that a problem had occurred with installation of the new device. The unit did not appear in Windows Explorer.

Upon checking the manual, we learned that the PVR must be up and running before it is connected to a PC. After we followed these instructions, Windows Explorer showed two new drives: one for the H140's hard disk drive, and the other for its SD card slot, which contained a 128 MB card. Using Windows Explorer, we were then able to move freely around both the disk and memory card, delete files, and copy between the internal drive and SD card as well as to and from the hard drives on our computer.

However, we discovered that you can only copy MP3 and WMA sound files directly to the H140's hard drive or SD card and later access them on the device. It is necessary to pass photo and video files, even those in the unit's native JPEG and ASF formats, through the converter program that comes with the device. This converts them when necessary, resizes them and creates a thumbnail that you can see when selecting files on the H140. If you don't do the conversion, photos are a meaningless jumble of bits and videos don't show up in the play selection list. During conversion, files can be saved to the device's hard drive or to a card in the SD slot.

When connected to a powered USB port, the PVR's battery is charged. However, while the H140 was connected to the USB port we could not use it to do anything. The unit goes into a kind of locked hibernation where the only thing you can choose between is the connection to your computer or an option to output still images to a printer (one that supports a Direct Print Services option such as PictBridge.)

To add insult to injury, when we disconnected the H140 using the Windows Safely Remove Hardware applet, the unit shut down. We think that is more than a little inconvenient, especially considering the 20 seconds it takes the device to fully turn back on. If we just pulled the USB plug without using Safely Remove Hardware, the H140 locked up and had to be reset.