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Hi,
I extracted files from the hdd from my humax pvr to my computer using Photorec.
What I've wound up with is 74gB of large .swf files which must be the media, along with .flv, .mts, .mp3, .frm, .ab and .txt.
I have had no luck in trying to get any media players to do anything with them.
Any suggestions, or is it game over?

Those file formats have weak signatures, they are more prone to false positive.
If you have valid files from your pvr, use the fidentify command to check if the file is correctly identified. If it's listed as "unknown", it's not the case.
If fidentify find your files but photorec is unable to recover files from your pvr, it may be because the data is encrypted.

Thank you for your reply.
The files mentioned above were extracted onto a hdd on my computer. The humax pvr drive has been formatted and reinstalled into the unit, and so these are the only copies now.
I was surprised to find the video files saved as .swf as I understood them to be .ts on the humax?
I think you are right about encryption, too, so I have no idea whether there is a way forward from this situation.

The PVR manufacturers act as if they want to prevent you from extracting media from your PVR.
You can ask Humax. If they don't want to tell you you may search the net for recipes from somebody who already solved your problem.

I have a similar problem.
The disk in my Humax pvr failed and I managed to recover a small number of .swf files using Photorec.
fidentify is currently scanning my whole 2TB HDD

Replace your proprietary Humax stuff by a computer with recording capabilities so that testdisk/photorec has a chance to succeed when having hard disk problems.

I now have a BBEdit file with file types for all 1.240.000 files.
I'm sure that will prove instructive

recuperation wrote: ↑15 Jul 2019, 21:25 Replace your proprietary Humax stuff by a computer with recording capabilities so that testdisk/photorec has a chance to succeed when having hard disk problems.

You make it sound so simple.

I do not consider the installation of a DVB-S2 card into a computer as difficult, especially compared to reverse engineering a proprietary drive structure of a PVR manufacturer.