Anyone want to take a guess at what this STB really is under Aldi's re-badging?

I'd be interested to know because my experience has been that most of their stuff is good quality ... just with a Medion or Tevion sticker on it.

Tevion SDTV Digital Set Top Box

I dont know.
But I do desperately need help to reformat the drive on my Tevion MD29401 as it wont record.
Unit says disc is full but it has 95% free!
Help desk said to restore factory settings which I did 3 times but nothing has changed as 2 programmes are still on record. But not playable.
Any help appreciated
john

HI there im sorry i cant help with your problem but maybe someone can help with mine i desperatly need an instruction book for the md29401 if anyone can help even if i have to pay it would be a big help thx

I found this at their website
http://download1.medion.de/downloads/anlei.../bda29401au.pdf

Not much in their about the PVR or any troubleshooting info.

Mine isn't recording or playing back at present...
May have to format the HD

{I did remove & try reading the HD directly, but it is formatted RAW and was not readable.}

I have recently had exactly the same problem with the MD29401 - it has filled up and after clearing off a number of recorded programs, it will no longer record as it still reports "full". Tried the factory reset too with no effect. I've gone back to my Strong 5390 now, while the Tevion is in bits.

Put the hard disk into my PC and it reports the disk as "raw". In PC-speak, the disk has not been formatted - so what format? I recall my Strong's 80Gb hard disk is FAT32, but the Tevion hard disk is a 160Gb and that's too big for FAT32. I can't believe the Tevion disk would be NTFS and doubt that it's EXT2. I have emailed Medion Support, but after a couple of days of no response I'm not hopeful.

If you find out, post it here please. I'll do the same.

Well, after a lot of surfing I've determined that the Tevion box is actually a re-badged box similar to the Wintal PVR-X10. Check out the photo in: http://users.bigpond.net.au/PCPro/transfer...tailed_version)

The problem is that the Wintal box incorporates a 80Gb disk, whereas the Tevion has a 160Gb disk. This may be irrelevant, unless there has been a change in the firmware to allow this. Regardless, still looking for info about prep'ing a new 160Gb harddisk for the Tevion/Wintal. From what I can tell, if you install an unformatted hard disk it will automatically prepare it on first boot. I'll confirm this once I've done a low-level bit format using a Western Digital tool - foolishly I let my Windoze PC "initialise" the harddisk.

OK, I think I've done it. I used a Western Digital tool to write zeroes to the hard disk I pulled out and plugged into my PC. I actually don't think you need to go that far though, but I'm not sure. Regardless, after putting the disk back into the Tevion I did this (from memory):

After first starting the unit up, press Menu twice on the remote to get to the menu which allows you to reset factory settings;
When you see the "language" screen, pull the power plug out of the wall, wait 5-10 seconds and then plug back in;
When the unit has fired back up and you're back at the "language" screen, select English, Australia then <whereever> - I didn't worry about setting channels at this point;
Press the PVR button and 7 (to get to the list of recorded shows) - if any there, delete them JIC;
Press the Menu button while in the recorded show list and the "Erase harddisk" option will appear - press OK - only takes a second.
The big test is to press the Info button to make sure it says ~159Gb remaining (some overhead taken);
Go back and set back up other stuff e.g. channel search, set-up timings for recordings, etc

At least this worked for me, although I won't buy another Tevion PVR again. And, yes, the Tevion does use the Digenius TV OS that the Wintal PVR-10A uses... see www.digenius.de

Good luck.

Back on the topic of the SD STB..... I had one in storage for a while, set it up and did a scan. It picked up allchannels in melbourne except channel 9. Looking at the quality meter on the screen ( yes, I know its not calibrated..), all channels were greater than 95%, except channel 9 digital, which showed 20%. I recal the frequency for this needs to be set to 191.625, but the box shows 191.5MHz. Is this the issue,or could it be a signal strength issue? Does anyone know how to force the setting to 191.625MHz.

Thanks,

JK

If the box meets the Australian standard, it would cope with a frequency offset, either high or low. That is a basic requirement.

I tried all manner of things with my MD29401 including deleting all recorded shows and erasing the harddrive and reseting to factory settings. I stopped short of pulling it apart and formatting the disk however. It came back to having 99.7% free space and would record but not play.

You can imagine my dismay when I physically powered it off by unplugging the power cable (behind the entertainment unit ) Powered it on after about 10 seconds to find all the recorded programs back on the list and intact. Whats more they now play ok too and the unit is working fine.

On top of that the reception that was reading C/N 18 sometimes fluctuating to 18.6 or 19 is now much clearer and reading around 21.

My lesson from all this is what I used to preach when I worked in IT, Do a hard power off for 10 seconds (with the power cable NOT the remote) before you waste anytime on clever software resets

Good Luck.