Totally agree with your comments (just wish I could have got it working with the 500gb drive - but decided to leave well enough alone). This gadget became an essential household item the day we got it and my non technical wife quickly picked it up. There is always improvements that can be made but I'd take reliability and ease of use over getting it right to the nth degree any time. Based on this experience I would be happy to give Homecast another go when it comes time to update/upgrade (although I know there have been some niggles with the HD version - these now seem to be mostly resolved).

Tried it last night and it doesn't work. Tested lots of different combinations and all of them resulted in one of the recordings stoppping when you change over to the third channel.

You can't get 2 channels recorded to hard drive while watching the third channel using this method.

Cheers

Scott

What's the trick with getting this box to update to day light savings time?
Set it to do so automatically in setup, but it hasn't happened yet? Missed a recording as a result.

Pity it doesn't work for you - it works fine for me every time. Both recordings continue while viewing a 3rd channel. Maybe different software version or settings. (S/W Vers 1.03.2A)

Lately I've been having problems with the box - recordings not always completing, picture break ups, and odd behaviour.

The other day I came home and found the standby light on but no time display, and I couldn't turn on the box - I had to unplug it and back in to get it working again.

Now whenever I change channels on the box there is a few seconds of pixelation that didn't exist before.

Is my box dying? Has anyone else had problems like these?

Couple of my regular recordings have been cut short for no apparent reason lately. I thought one of my kids may have stopped them before they had finished? I'll have to keep a closer eye on it.

Everything seems to be better since I did a factory reset, rescan the channels and format the HDD.

I noticed on rescan that I seem to have 3 copies of each station on different channel numbers, all with varying signal strengths. I found the strongest signal on each station and deleted the others, now all my channels work fine, which was not the case before, they seemed to go up and down a lot.

Oh yeah, I tried the trick to watch a channel while recording two others, and by god it works! How cool is that, does ANY other box do this?

Has anyone else had finished up with recordings that play part of the way through, but freeze at some point.
This has happened to me a couple of times. When you try to jump or fast forward the on screen timer bar starts moving forward at a rate of knots, but the picture remains frozen and it will not respond to the stop command?
The box recognises and sees the whole program is there in memory, but it just won't play it?
Very frustrating!

I've had exactly that error happen, with 30 seconds of the recording playable, then i had a frozen picture for the rest of the recording. Also, on the odd occasion while recording a program on one channel and watching another program on a completely separate chanel, what got recorded was the channel i was watching, not the one i wanted recording, until i swiched channels. Bizarre & i dunno why it happens. Needed to power off using the rear switch to reset everything to normal.

As this box runs quite hot, i usually power it down every night after i finish using it. I've also set black (can't see em) 2L milk bottle lids under each of the feet, to give more clearance between my box & cabinet it sits in for better airflow, but i should really incorporate a fan into the case to do the job properly. I found that last summer the pvr would lock up if left on too long in very hot weather (<35 deg).

For some reason this has happened twice now to the same recording (Packed to the Rafters 8.30pm Tuesday night Ch 7).
First time it played the first 18 minutes then froze although it said it had recorded the whole thing. The following week it recorded just 45 seconds of the show then stopped for no apparent reason?

Maybe if I delete the booking and then re-enter it? Just a thought . . .

I always power mine down for the night too.

Hi Revhead,

these problems sound like they are related to an earlier post which I quote below. I have also seen this happen and always try and remember to recheck what I am recording after I finish watching a prerecorded show.

QUOTE(Nick C @ May 9 2007, 09:04 AM)
Getting on great with this device, just one issue;

If I am watching an existing recording from the HD and a new recording starts, often the new recording messes up. Either is only 2 minutes long or misses the middle. The icons on the PVR software indicate that the unit is recording, but only from looking at the List menu can you see that the recording is only 2 minutes long and takes up 64 Mb....

If I leave the box alone or am using it as a STB, it works beautifully, two channels at once is bliss... The problem is only caused if I am watching an existing recording.

Any ideas?

I can make this problem - or at least something very similar - happen at will. It happens when you stop playing a recording, during which the PVR started recording something that required it to change the channel. Let me give you the sequence of steps:
1. Start by watching a channel live. (Say channel 2).
2. Set the PVR to record something in the not-too-distant future. (Say on channel 10). The key is that this has to be a channel OTHER than the one in step 1.
3. Start watching something you've previously recorded. Keep doing so until the PVR commences to record whatever you set in step 2.
4. Once the PVR has started the recording, stop the playback. You will find yourself watching the channel you were watching in step 1.
5. Stop the recording in progress (unless you want to let it proceed to completion).

The results vary depending on what channel you chose in step 2:
- If you chose channel 10, you will find the recording continues, but has changed to the channel in steps 1 & 4.
- If you chose channel 9, the recording will have stopped when you stopped the [unrelated] playback.
- If you chose channel 7, the recording will go into a weird lockup mode, with the short file length as per Nick's example.
- I've not tried with ABC (either channel) or SBS.

This to me sounds like a firmware bug. I doubt its the hard disk issue discussed a few times in this thread because (a) it's repeatable and ((IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) if the channel in step 2 is the same as in step 1 the problem does not occur.

I have also done the above steps with a "step 0" being recording something on a 3rd channel for the duration of the experiment. (So for a period both channels were recording). In thise case, I got the same results as above.

I've had mine for ~15 months now. Got home last night and my wife wants me to look at it -apparently "it's really slow". She was right - it took 20-30 seconds to respond to a Standby command. Apparently it had been that way since about lunchtime. I did a power-off-on which restored things to normal, but then I went looking further and the problems returned. Pressing any button on the remote or unit itself led to a looong wait before any response.

Hooked up the laptop to see if I could grab anything off it, and transfers were really, really slow - estimated times in the multiple hours for ten minute recordings, for example. None of my attempts would get more than a few MB in before seeming to stop anyway.

Opened it up and the harddrive, which has been a bit whiny lately, was very hot - almost too hot to touch. Oh oh. I suspect the drive is cooked. I don't have a spare IDE drive laying about to test it, and a quick look on the net last night suggest stocks of the CE-version drives are (1) low to non-existant; and (2) expensive per GB.

The current HDD is a WD 250GB AV-series that I put in when I bought the unit to cure the stuttering playback problems of the time. Allegedly it has a 3 year warranty. It's worked just fine, up until now.

Options seem to be:

1. Pursue a warranty claim on the existing drive, pay to post it back to the store in Melbourne and wait to see what happens (~$15, weeks, may not work)
2. See if I can find someone with stocks of an IDE CE drive, and wait for the postman to deliver (~$130-$160 delivered depending on sizes available, approx 1 week, longer if no-one has stock, may not fix the problem)
3. Buy a replacement non-CE drive, and hope I don't get stuttering (~$130-$160 delivered depending on sizes available, today/soon to a few days depending on where I buy, may not fix the problem)
4. Bite the bullet and buy a replacement, such as its big brother, the HT8000PVR ($500ish+, today/soon, should work)

The money is less important than the downtime, but I don't want to just throw it away either. I'm in Canberra, so limited local purchasing options usually means no bargain-basement prices.

In the meantime we're back to watching analogue TV. It took the wife about an hour to say how she missed it...

While an upgrade is the most tempting, we only have a cheap old 63cm 4:3 CRT. Conscious decision on our part a few years ago as we were going to start a family and we wanted something cheap and robust. We now have three kids, a 2.5yo and 6 month old twins, and sticky fingers/mess/"touching things" are the order of the day. So, no flat panels for us then...which kinda makes a HiDef PVR replacement a bit of overkill, especially given the lifespan of the last one. We were going to try and wait a few more years yet for a replacement TV.

Main uses for the old one were taping and/or timeshifting stuff we wanted to watch that was on when we were otherwise engaged looking after kids, and taping shows for my eldest so we could always give in to his demands for Wiggles/Bob the Builder/Larry the Lawnmower etc. I had archived off most of these to the PC, and play them back via a Popcorn Hour, so at least I haven't got a looming temper tantrum. Whatever I get MUST have some sort of PC connection, either USB or ethernet. Running a cable isn't a problem.

So, what do the experts think - Does it sound dead? Worth chasing a warranty job on the drive or am I going to be told I've cooked it, too bad? Chase a replacement drive, or go the extra for a replacement PVR? If a replacement is there any particular models I should be looking at given my usage?

Sorry to waffle on. Been doing my head in all night chewing this over and would appreciate a second/third opinion.

I should add that I currently have the unit running with timeshift turned off in the hope that the HDD will stay off, although I think I can hear it humming away. My aim was to test to see if the problem was with the HDD or the unit. Don't know how conclusive this will be, but so far so good. It has had all night to cool down though. We'll see.

Oh, and this morning the wife nixed the "Go out and buy a whole new TV package while you're at it" option too. Rats.

An hour or so later and the top of the PVR is hot to the touch again. Obviously didn't work as a HDD isolation test.

I have found some online stores I've dealt with in the past that claim to have stock of the CE-spec drives. I'll pull the HDD this afternoon and hook it up to my PC, see if I can read/diagnose it, see if that gives any clues as to the source of the failure before deciding to purchase.

Woah! The thread that would not die!

I have one of these units too (purchased August 2007). It is still going strong with the original Seagate drive, but I it does have the odd moment where everything goes pear shaped and I power-cycle it and it seems to recover.

If you look back in this thread bill (screen name techo) reports that the WD drive problems stemmed from the drive sucking too much voltage from the power supply. If you can't source a CE drive here in Canberra then maybe you could just get a (quiet) drive with a low voltage requirement.

If you need to recover data from the drive I've had luck cooling down a duff drive for long enough to get it do work. I put a lump of aluminium in the freezer and then sat the drive on it while I transferred stuff of it.

(Aside: I also have a CRT screen (so old it has a separate UHF tuning knob!). I also have little kids so I get how useful it is to have the TV shows when required)

I remember - I'm fairly sure that was about the time or shortly before the AV spec drive requirement became known. I went with the AV drive, which at the time was a touch more expensive than a non-AV one. FF 15 months and the prices seem to have remained the same. I have found an online retailer with stock whom I've dealt with a few times before. I'll probably purchase one in a minute, once I've compared power requirements.

Shortly after posting my last message I pulled the HDD from the PVR and checked it with one of those infrared thermometers - it said 54 degrees. Eek - that after 1.5 hrs runtime at best. Connected it up to my PC, ran a SMART checker which reported a 51 degree drive temp, which didn't drop over 10 mins or so with no drive activity. Windows couldn't read the drive. Given the glacial USB transfer speeds from this machine I doubt I'm going to get anything off it. TBH, there isn't a lot lost - most of the kids stuff I had already grabbed, and at worst we lost about a week's worth of adult TV shows. We've spent the last month or so catching up on old stuff as the drive was looking full, so we're fairly lucky there.

I had a run around Tuggeranong this morning - most places hadn't heard of AV-spec drives. Found one place with a Seagate with AV in the serial - checked it out and it was for security cameras, not DVRs - Seagate uses ACE for those. Wasn't game to buy it "just in case".

GG Tuggeranong had very few replacement options. 1x Toppy 7100, 1x Homecast 8000, small stack of Toppy 5000MPs. Prices were high too.

I'll order a replacement AV-spec drive and see how it goes. I'm a little disappointed to only get a 15 month life out of the last one. Once I have the new drive in I'll pursue warranty on the old one and see how I go. Might score my next replacement drive (for 15 months time?) free.

I'll post back here if the new HDD fixes things, so others with this machine can see the problem if they experience it.

Don't bother going to the place of purchase they usually will not want to know after 3-12 months, send your WD drive back to WD as these drives have a 3 or 5 year warranty the web site will tell you and guide you through the process

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index_end.asp?lang=en

BTW you can use just about any IDE drive especially for a test, samsung work for AV well, DVR or AV = rated for 24hour use

Good luck

Does he just have to wack a replacement drive in there, do a format and he's good to go?

I'd have thought he needs to put an image on the drive first before the PVR can use it.

Best box I've had until tonight.
It went a bit strange when trying to watch recorded files.
Turned off power point & waited.
No longer recognises HD and no HD functions available in menu.
No HD noise any more.

Tried another HD from my PC, HD noise, not recognised, no HD menu options.
Tried 200gb 7200.7 barracuda & samsung 120gb sp1203n
both are probably ntfs

i still hve warranty but expect it to be way for some time?

Any ideas?

Dacho

Probably going to depend on firmware version as to which HD you can use/will be recognised. Mine is still running on original firmware and Seagate 160gb HD.

In my case I attempted to upgrade HD quite a while back and found the following:

Tried a new standard Seagate 500gb drive (non ce) and it was recognised straight away and useable but unit suffered stuttering and slight freezing which was unacceptable.

Tried a new WD 500gb drive (CE version) and drive was not recognised at all. ie - you still get menu items etc when unit is running but no options relating to HD etc. I understand the firmware upgrade may have corrected this and the issue above but was not confidant to complete this.

So - which hd you can use appears to depend on whether you are running latest firmware or not.

dacho,
When you put the hard drive in you have to format it. The PVR does not use FAT32 or NTFS, it uses a different file system.

Well over 2 and half years and mines still going. 2 simultaneous timer recordings every day. It does at times do the whole non-responsive thing but it usually comes good again. Starting to look at at HD PVR now.

The thread that never dies.
My box has been playing up recently and I'm thinking of upgrading the hard disk.
Reading back over this thread I am not surprised that I have been getting glitches considering I have a Seagate drive and the latest firmware (a bad combo from what I can see).
Am thinking of getting a WD 320GB AVJB drive, or maybe even the 500GB but that might be getting greedy. With the latest firmware (1.04.2A) they should work together yes? I'd rather just get a brand that is going to work with the firmware than downgrading it.
Also have the 320Gb WD in my other PVR so I know it's a good drive.

Have you tried resetting to Defaults? You will lose all your Timer settings but everything else remains OK. My DSE is nearly 2-1/2 years old now with the original Seagate and firmware, and that one reset is the only thing I've had to do to keep it running well. Guess I've been lucky, but it's great PVR!

Jim.

Nah, haven't tried resetting to defaults. But reading back over this thread I think my trouble stems from the fact I have a Seagate drive with the latest firmware which don't go too well together. We keep running out of room so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone - more room and a drive that is compatible with this version?
It is still a very serviceable if not great PVR. Recording in standard definition and playing back on our hi-def LCD, you don't notice that much difference. I don't see any reason for ugrading to hi-def just yet.

Same here. I've had mine for 2 years and it has been great. Practically never watch live TV anymore. Considering it was only $200 (which was a steal at the time) it has been a great little unit.

The combination of only 10 timers and no cut/edit facility is the thing that really hobbles it. I routinely have 9 timers set and sometimes have to delete a regular timer so I can queue up a movie or two and then have to remember to reset the regular timer.

I used to have to do a hard restart every now and then, but I've been keeping the hard drive alot less cluttered lately and it hasn't locked up for ages.

The brain-dead labelling of recorded shows is annoying, but I did get used to it.

There are only a couple of things I would class as bugs.

Sometimes it can get confused when there are two timers recording and I drop out of playing a recorded show and the channel was set to something other than the two timers that are recording. It gives me a "service unavailable" message, which on it's own would be ok, but it also seems to affect at least one of the timed recordings. Last time it happened I switched channels to one which was being recorded and then later when I played it back it skipped a few seconds at the point where it was displaying the "service unavailable" dialogue. I can't be sure, but I'm willing to bet that if I hadn't changed channels it would have hosed the rest of that recording.

If I am playing a recorded show and it is paused, it will un-pause if a timer fires. From memory it also does something weird to chaseplay when another time fires, but I could be wrong about that.

I am using the old version of the firmware, as I had a seagate drive and it seemed better not to upgrade as the later firmware was mostly about trying to fix issues with WD drives.

Right now I am thinking about uprading the TV from the 17" CRT (with UHF tuning knob!) to 32" LCD and am bummed out that LG and Samsung have dropped s-video inputs. I've been looking into scart connectivity and about the best deal I can come up with is a SCART to HDMI converter.

Dropping another $90 seems stupid for a $200 SD PVR ....

[Right now I am thinking about uprading the TV from the 17" CRT (with UHF tuning knob!) to 32" LCD and am bummed out that LG and Samsung have dropped s-video inputs. I've been looking into scart connectivity and about the best deal I can come up with is a SCART to HDMI converter.

Dropping another $90 seems stupid for a $200 SD PVR ....[/quote]

I've had 4-1/2 years excellent service from my 32" Hisense CRT which performs faultlessly, although it does have limited inputs. I would definitely look at a Hisense LCD when it's time to go to a 16:9 screen. And, IIRC, a Sanyo had a decent write up from Choice not long ago.

Jim.

I was a bit concerned about what the picture quality would be like when I replaced my crt with panasonic 50inch plasma. With the crt I used to get a great picture just using the composite connection. Needn't have worried. Picture quality is great on the plasma but composite is not so good and I dont use that any more. I run svideo into my yamaha avr which upconverts to component out to tv and as mentioned picture quality is great.

Really reliable little unit that I have never had any regrets over.

spam posts reported

*****************

This is NOT spam. Clicking on these links brings up a Trojan. Fortunately my AV (Avast) stopped it in its tracks.

Be warned.

JimC

Updated my PVR recently from the original Seagate drive that was giving me problems to a WD 320Gb that seems to work better with my firmware.
Have not had one problem yet, touch wood.

Hi i am new here i have a DS 6200PVR and i lost the moment and they told me it will be $89.95 for a replacement one which i thought was a bit rich, how would i go useing a universal remote i have one here that i use for my TV & DVD but no longer have a codes booklet any ideas?

Thanks in advance.
Mathew

You could get a cheap one but it is unlikely to have the codes for the PVR. You could get a learner but you'd need the original remote. You could get a Logitech but even one of the cheaper ones would cost you around the same. In the end you're probably better off just replacing the remote if you're attached to the machine.
I have a unversal which I use in conjunction with the original because I find I can more quickly and easily access the features I want.

Thanks Revhead,

Can you please provide me with the code/s that you used to set up your universal?

Cheers,
Mathew

Sorry, it's a Logitech.
You connect to their website and do it all through there (no codes involved)

I could never find the correct entry in database for logitech remote. I even tried really hard one time when I took the pvr away for holidays and forgot to take the remote but happened to have the logitech 525 with me. In the end it defeated me. I would be very interested to know what device in the dbase you used to set it up.

There was no trick to it.
In fact I am using a 525 too (I've got two of them).
I remember when setting it up it came back and suggested it had a better match for the PVR (I'm pretty sure it was this one)
I just agreed and it works perfectly.
Just connected it to the PC and in devices it shows the box as as PVR (DSEDS-6200PVR)
Hope this helps?

I am having no luck what so every setting up my logitech 525 remote with my DS-6200PVR can any provide me with a step by step guide for someone who hasnt got the orignal remote?

Thanks in advance

Try setting it up as the DSE G-2083 (under PVR's) - that's how mine is setup and as I recall only a couple of the functions were not in the database - that was a couple of years ago so they may have been updated by now.

Has anyone with this PVR tried to add a drive larger than 500Gb and got it to work? What about trying to put in something like a 1Tb SATA drive with a SATA to IDE converter? The IDE drives are really starting to get a bit scarce (& expensive compared to SATA) now...

Hi All,

I've been given a 6200PVR that isn't working properly any more. The STB works just fine receiving channels, but the PVR option is gone. If I go into the menu there is no PVR option there at all anymore! I have updated the firmware to the latest version, tried a new hard drive as well with different jumper settings. I presume I can put any hard drive in without having to format it first?

Does anyone have any ideas for me to try? I'm starting to think that maybe its IDE controller has died or something like that.

Thanks

Have you tried a factory reset?

Hi I have this pvr that my wife loves as it is so easy to use. Over the last week on playback and sometimes on live TV it frequently stutters and goes in sort of a slow motion for a couple of seconds before going back to normal. It makes her shows unwatchable. I had fixed it by turning it completely off and letting it cool down but not even that seems to work now. I was thinking it may be the hard drive going. Also when you go into the menus and list of shows it is definitely slower than before. Would anyone with some knowledge have any idea of what this could be at all? I would hate to think that it is reaching old age and that soon it may have to be retired (my wife won't be happy)! Thanks.

If you switched off from the PVR that doesn't reset the unit, you must turn off at the power point. If this doesn't correct the problem when you switch on again, try a factory reset. From memory, that might delete your timer settings but won't delete anything you have recorded. If that doesn't fix the problem, I hope others, more expert than I, can jump in and help you.
These two 'solutions' have kept my DSE going for nearly three years now.

JimC

Yes, me too. I have the WD hard drive and original firmware, also time shift is set to off.

I'm getting the same problem with my pvr and the "stuttering" is exacerbated when i try to record a show on some channels. Channel 9 is now unwatchable as the signal strength is now always very low for that channel and jumps all over the place, so i can't even watch it let alone record any show on that mux. Getting a little stuttering on 2 & 10 when recording, but it's watchable. Recorded channel 7 shows are non watchable due to the amount of stuttering when recorded. I've tried turning the pvr off from the rear switch, letting it cool, resetting to defaults, rescanning the channels, etc, but I suspect the tuners are dying due to the heat load the pvr has been subjected to over the last couple of years by not having a fan in the box. The hard drive noise also seems a bit louder theses days too, so much so that i leave the pvr in standby until i want to watch a show. I know the antenna/cabling to the box isn't the issue as i run a HD tuner card in my pc which can record HD shows quite happily with no skipping whatsoever.

The WAF was fairly low with this pvr (she just couldn't get the hang of using it) but i dunno why, as i found it quite a simple beast to use.
Having s-video as the highest quality output out of the pvr is a bit of a liabilty now too.

Like Sparkyglo i think it may be time to retire it this pvr and go get a HD tv in the other room (near the air con) to replace our 15 year old 51cm panasonic crt (it just won't die!!!!). The new tv will have its built in HD tuner and then i'll get a nas box/media streamer box to show the shows recorded on the pc directly on that tv.

My first thought was that you need a better antenna. Just about all your problems could be symptoms of poor signal strength so why not buy a DSE powered amp (the Kingray is about $50) and see if that makes a difference. If not, you have 14 days to return for a refund.
Channel 7 has always had some stuttering, but usually only after fast forwarding through an ad.
Switching off the unit from the rear switch doesn't reset the computer. You need to switch off from the mains to do this.
If you have Time Shift set on, try with it set off.

My DSE reaches its '3rd birthday' this month and sits on the lowest shelf with a milk bottle top under each foot, which helps it run only very warm!
It's a pity Sparkyglo didn't come back to say how he went with his DSE problems. Could have been a big help to us all.

JimC