PVRs - opinions & advice, please.

[Scoosh]

Nope - still dodgy.

Damn ... that has raised the question of unreliability, which I don't want when recording things that I really want to watch. It so happens that the 3 duff recordings so far happen to be things that I am not too bothered about, and programmes that I do want to watch seem to be okay. Well, they start playing, unlike the 3 in question; whether they play all the way through without any problems will only become apparent when I try to watch them.

They know you, Colin ...

Time to be aware - be very aware ...

 

[swee'pea99]

When I had problems with my Humax, I was advised to do a HD format. It wipes all the recorded progs, obviously, but it does (fingers crossed) seem to have sorted out its lickle tantrums.

 

[ColinJ]

When I had problems with my Humax, I was advised to do a HD format. It wipes all the recorded progs, obviously, but it does (fingers crossed) seem to have sorted out its lickle tantrums.

Thinking along those lines, I pulled the plug on the machine to force it to reboot. I have deleted the corrupted recordings and have just scheduled a couple of overlapping test recordings to see if they turn out ok.

I have quite a backlog of recordings to watch, but when I have caught up, I think I will reformat the drive.

In other news:

• While searching for advice, I found a tip for how to step through ads 30 seconds at a time rather than the too-coarse 2 minutes at a time that I was doing before (Up/Down arrow buttons on remote rather than Left/Right).
• I also found a supplier on Amazon doing replacement remote controls for under £7 so I have ordered one of those.

 

[swee'pea99]

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

That's a good first stab, but if it doesn't work, I do recommend the format. Apparently what happens (and the symptoms you describe are very similar to the ones I was experiencing) is that the filing software gets its knickers in a twist, and the only sure solution is to wipe. I was also advised that if it re-occurs anytime soon, it probably means the HD is on its way out.

 

[ColinJ]

My two test recordings were fine. I am doing two more recordings this evening so let's see how I get on with those.

My EPG is scrolling about twice as fast as it was before I rebooted the PVR, which is a bit unexpected!

I suppose the PVR is just a glorified computer with Freeview tuners added on. Rebooting every now and then certainly speeds up my laptop, which I normally put into hibernation rather than switching it off.

 

[byegad]

We have a Sony DVR and it will record two programmes while we watch a third, 1Tb of memory and the only downside is it takes an age to switch on for playback.