Hi all,
Sorry I never got back to you regarding the poor signal problem.

I got someone to look at the aerial and he said it's perfect not to mention the box also reported 'Very Good' at the time. I couldn't understand how this could change so much, so I thought I'd just keep an eye on it and see what happens. Anyway one day I noticed it was showing 'Poor' again, so I thought I'd restart the box, and I couldn't believe my eyes, after booting back up, it reported 'Very Good'. I've since noticed that after rebooting it will say 'Very Good for a few hours before going back to 'Poor', and the moment I reboot, 'Very Good' again.

I'm going to take it back to be replaced seeing as my other one don't appear to do this.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Take care


Ninko

Digifusion owners used to get symptoms like this with overheating/failing tuners. Maybe worth checking you have plenty of airflow? Any cooling fans in the box - are these obscured/working?

If it's in warranty and you can get it replaced, then that seems like a sensible approach.

Yes, the T835 units do get quite hot, especially when not using low power mode. So it is important not to block the air vents (i.e. the complete top of the unit) and that there is plenty of room for ventilation. There are no cooling fans.

Hi

I'm considering buying the Hitachi HDR165 or the 255 (depends which one I can get from Argos) for my Mum as her region is going digital next year and she will finally have to pension off her VCR.

But I read on Amazon that if you select something to record from the EPG, there is no way to expand the start and end times. Is this true?

I have a Sony DVD recorder and I can add at least 10 minutes to the end of every recording.

Thanks!

Although the Vestels (of which the Hitachi is one) all use the same basic hardware and software, and work pretty much identically, there is some variation. My older Hitachi 162 had the option to add padding removed whereas other Vestel machines had this feature left intact.

You could always download the manual and have a look:
http://www.hitachidigitalmedia.com/p...=en&country=GB

I have found that the Vestels are brilliant time-keepers, better than any other PVR brand, without the need for "padding" - it constantly updates the EPG (electronic programme guide). Where the channels are not particularly good at sending the signals for starts & ends of progs (ITV are bad) the adverts form the padding. I wouldn't bother about padding if it's going to restrict your choice.

parthena

I believe the manual padding facility was removed on all Vestel PVRs which have the Accurate Recording feature i.e. those using the T816 hardware and later.

Colin

Hi there,
Is there a way to scan for new channels on the Hitachi HDR165 without losing all the Timers you have set?

Thanks


Ninko

Selfless creature that I am, I've just done an automatic scan on your behalf and, yes, I've lost my timers But they were all on one channel tonight so I can easily replace them

I don't know if you could avoid this by selecting the specific UHF channel that you know the new channels you're looking for are on, and doing a manual scan

I also don't remember if the box picks up new channels without us having to scan for them

parthena

Yes, manual channel scans will add new channels without deleting any timers - of course, neither will it delete/replace/rename any existing channels. Unfortunately, Vestel PVRs have never had the feature of automatically picking up new channels when available .

Hi parthena,
Awww I'm sorry you lost all your timers trying that for me, I feel bad about that lol. I'm glad you could set them back easy though.

Hi futaura,
I didn't think the box automatically picked up new channels, perhapes this is a good new feature for them? Or failing that, allow automatic channel scanning without removing all timers?

Thanks both of you


Ninko

I wouldn't hold your breath on that . Maybe when they bring a HD PVR out. Earlier software versions did not remove the timers - I guess this was changed in case channels move or disappear after scanning, and if you have timers set on those channels strange things with the internal timer list started to happen. So, it is safer/easier just to delete them all, although obviously a far from perfect solution.

i have found my Hitachi HDR165 occasionally changes channels without warning and at seemingly random times and to a random channel, to a different Mux and not the same Mux as the second tuner.

Do you use the EPG title/genre search function at all? This is known to potentially trigger these symptoms. I've dubbed this problem "phantom channel changes", but I haven't seen it happen for a long, long time on my T835 (running v3.4).

I have just bought a Hitachi HDR 505 (as a replacement for a digifusion) which I am generally pleased with apart from it freezing every couple of days and requiring the power to be off and rebooted to get back to normal. I understand this is a T835 box and wondered if they all did this. I have disabled the low power option as this was a nuisance, would this have anything to do with it?

Also the software version is 3.3 and I believe the latest version is 3.4. Does anyone know when an update will be broadcast and what difference it makes?

You need to keep an eye on this site for OADs:

http://www.dtg.org.uk/industry/download_schedule.php

Futaura might have something, hang on...

This is his page with T835 info, at the bottom it says that no OADs are scheduled within the next 7 days and the message is updated hourly:

http://www.vestelpvr.futaura.co.uk/T835.php

However, I've lost the page where he has some downloads for installing via RS232 and I don't know if T835 was available anyway. But hopefully he will be along here soon to advise you.

I would sadly add that updating didn't fix my very glitchy Wharfedale T825

parthena

Disabling low power mode is most likely the problem - could you elaborate on when and how it freezes? Earlier software versions used to help because at 3am they rebooted every day if automatic update checks was enabled - do you have this disabled too? This feature was removed at some point and certainly isn't in 3.4, but I'm not sure if it is in 3.3 or not. This daily reboot can help if you have low power mode disabled. I would also suggest deleting any unwanted channels from the channel list since this improves performance.

Fortunately, 3.3 doesn't have the bug where it will often not wake up from low power standby to record something - not sure exactly when it was fixed (sometime after 2.7, but certainly anything from 3.2 onwards is safe in this respect). So, I would advise enabling low power mode if you can bear the disadvantages.

I don't exactly know the difference between 3.3 and 3.4 - probably relatively minor. Since 3.2 though, there was a fix to stop repeated recording events occurring (this fix went into either 3.3 or 3.4). I'm not sure if the 3.4 OAD will be rebroadcast since it has been repeated quite a few times already over previous months, but anyway I don't think it will solve the freeze problem that you're having with low power mode off.

Thanks for the replies. I had already found the futaura site.

The freezing seems to happen randomly. I will try putting the low power option back on and see if it makes a difference. I will also try deleting unwanted channels if I can find out how. The software does have auto update and I still have that enabled so I will just wait for an update.

I will let you know what happens.

This is one task which Vestel makes easy-peasy:

Menu/ChannelList - as you scroll down thru the channels select "Delete" at the bottom... you'll see

parthena

It's even easier than that. Just press the "OK" button to display the Channel List.

Colin

Although this feature isn't enabled in all builds for the T835. I can't remember off-hand whether it is still in v3.x - I think it may have been removed along with the AUX button.

Ah! I didn't know that. Thanks for the correction.

I can understand "removing" the AUX as with no second Scart the button has no function. Incidentally did they just disable the Aux function or did they remove or delete the marking on the Remote Control. I would guess they didn't change the remote.

Does the OK button now have a different role while watching Live TV?

Colin

Actually, I was wrong - pressing OK on live tv does bring up the channel list still, as you say, on my v3.4 at least. It certainly didn't on some previous version that I have tested, where the OK button did nothing at all on live tv.

I can only guess that they didn't change the remote - I did make comment long ago that the AUX button was a bit "wrong" on the T835 since it only has one scart socket. It would be more appropriate for the button to have TV/DTV or something written on it. To remove the function completely is a bit of an annoyance, as it was useful to switch between the TV tuner and the PVR. As I've mentioned elsewhere, it was also disabled in a stupid way - i.e. before the OAD, if you left the box in AUX mode and the box updated itself, when you need switch it on you're stuck forever in AUX mode (because the box remembers the "channel" that was selected when you switched it off) with no way to get out of it. Only way is to downgrade, switch out of AUX mode, and upgrade again, which is obviously somewhat more difficult due to the lack of real RS232 port, but can be done via a scart adaptor. I suspect Argos got a fair few boxes back because of this oversight.

Thanks for the info, I remember your comments about the issues it caused for some users when the Aux button was disabled. The TV/DTV designation has been used on other PVRs I've used and have to say I found it very confusing. I prefer the designation SOURCE which I think is more logical and intuitive.

Colin

Thanks for all the comments. I have left it a few weeks to see what happened.

I turned on the low power option and deleted the unwanted channels and since then the box has behaved better. I have only had to turn the power off once in the last four weeks.

However it seems to have a mind of its own, which is a bit annoying. It seems to do things at random so you can never be sure what is going to happen.

Examples are: recording the same things twice, i.e. 2 entries in the timers list. Also recording episodes which you have already recorded, watched and deleted eg the 10pm Eastenders on BBC3 after already recording and watched the earlier one.
It also sometimes wants to record episodes from all channels it can find rather than the series link you have put in.

It also takes a lot longer to get the guide, library, timer list and to delete than the digifusion.

The remote control is also sometimes very slow to respond and then goes past where you want.

However it has got some good points and now it is more reliable should be ok until we get the Freeview HD service and hopefully there should be some good HD boxes around.

Thanks again for everyone's help