Thomson DTI6300 digital TV recorder flashing amber light
Hi,
my Thomson DTI6300 digital recorder has stopped working and there's a flashing amber light on the front of it. I have followed advice on other websites and - switched off, turn on when pressing standby and then press up, down, left and right. Tried this several times. This appears to work for other people but not for me. Does anyone have any advice? Greatly appreciated. Thanks.
my Thomson DTI6300 digital recorder has stopped working and there's a flashing amber light on the front of it. I have followed advice on other websites and - switched off, turn on when pressing standby and then press up, down, left and right. Tried this several times. This appears to work for other people but not for me. Does anyone have any advice? Greatly appreciated. Thanks.
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Assuming I am correct (I am 95% certain if your PSU is as was built by Thomson) if you or a friend can solder self repair is easy and cheap. There is a company called Satcure who sell a bag of bits repair kit here. The capacitors in the Satcure kit are extremely reliable and will almost certainly outlive the rest of the box (Satcure do not sell cheap crap, their thinking is that it is far better to repair only once but to do it properly).
Other than the hard disk and the cooling fan there is not much else in these boxes that will fail. I bought one of these for my parents on ebay around two years ago and replaced the caps on the PSU as well as fitting a heatsink to the CPU (not manditory, but seing as I had it in bits) I also cleaned out all the fluff around the cooling fan. Apart from the occasional power cycle reboot, the unit has been rock solid ever since, this despite TUTV's clunky software. The biggest capacitor on those PSUs can hold a charge for quite a while so I would recommend unplugging your unit now so that this charge can dissipate before your parts arrive. There are several pages on the net giving instructions as to how to open up these units. Don't be scared of self repair, given a decent power supply these boxes are pretty damn good.
If you cannot solder there is a list of Satcure recommended repairers here. Order the kit and take it and your box and they will do the rest.
Good luck and let me know how you get on.
I have one of the machines too, and it be the last make i buy..Always going funny..Motor is loud and annoying with a loud hum..When mine dies i shall consider another make
You will have no option but to choose another make as Thomson have withdrawn from the set top box market. As a rule their stuff was not bad but they were severely let down by the very poor capacitors used in the power supplies they installed.
You should think of the power supply unit (PSU) as the heart of the box. Everything that it has to do ultimately comes from the power supply. If this is not delivering clean, stable and reliable power to the rest of the box then performance will suffer. In most cases a Thomson box with a hot rodded PSU (ie: one that has has the capacitors replaced with more stable and reliable parts ala the Satcure repair kit I linked to in my earlier reply above) will be a vastly more reliable unit than even a brand new original box as even when brand new the CapXon capacitors Thomson used were rubbish. The Satcure kit only features Panasonic capacitors which cost a bit more but are VERY stable and reliable. So much so that a PSU modified with Satcure parts will in practically every case outlive the rest of the box. It is a fit it and forget it repair.
Orangemaid, the reason for the issues you are having with your unit are almost certainly caused by a failing PSU. As the cheap rubbish capacitors die they send out all manner of crap and noise along with the DC power that drives the rest of the box. In addition to this noise (crackles on the line to you and me) the DC power will not be stable but vary wildly (often too much as opposed to not enough). All of this has the effect of confusing the tuners, hard drive and CPU and performance as well as reliability will be degraded at best. Fit decent parts to the PSU and most if not all of these issues should melt away in the majority of cases. Obviously if you do nothing then the PSU will eventually fall over completely. Common symptoms of a failing PSU in these units are poor reception on known good signals, the inability to update the software or the EPG and failure to start up the hard drive leading to the red and orange flashing lights of death. The noisy cooling fan can probably be sorted out by a good clean out (it will almost certainly be full of fluff by now). After it has been cleaned a drop of good quality light machine oil (sewing machine oil is fine for this but DON'T use 3in1 as it has wax in it and is not a good oil IMHO) just peel back the sticker a a drop or two of oil on the spindle should stop the noise.
These boxes are not bad at all given a fighting chance with a decent power supply. They are only let down by their power hungry nature in standby. As I said above the box I rebuilt for my parents has been very reliable over the past 22 months or so.
Good luck and I hope this information is useful.