Fighting against the overwhelming tide of Foxsat HDR owners here........

I've had the Grundig about a month. For the first three weeks all was well. Did everything fine and I was really pleased. But the gremlins appear to have arrived.....

About a week ago, the box appeared to lock up, very poor response to remote control. Power cycle appeared to sort it. Then we had a similar problem a few days later. After a bit of fiddling around, discovered that it's not a problem with the box as such, more an issue with the remote control. It appears to suddenly suffer from a very poor/low power output. It would still work if placed about 2" from the receiver in the box! After much cussing from me, MrsA gave the front of the remote a gentle wipe (as if I hadn't already tried that and changing batteries and giving it a "gentle" tap) and it miraculously sprung back into life. Uh! It appears the window at the front of the remote has a tiny anount of sideways movement and just tweaking it one way or the other seems to make a huge difference - really!
Maybe that's just coincidence and there's a more fundamental internal fault within the remote itself.

In the last week we've had some failures to record; no signal found error on Channel 4 (though it recorded a program on the same channel 30 minutes earlier) and two or three series links that failed to kick off. Odd as we didn't have any of these issues in the first three weeks. So not sure if this is due to transmission issues, or if the box/remote is suffering old age already. We have a signal strength of around 90% and quality is usually 100%. Firmware upgraded to 2.2.3 at install and this hasn't changed.

Once we've watched up the recorded programs, it's going back to Costco for an exchange. Just wondered if there's anyone else out there with one of these boxes and what their experience has been like. Shame really, as the early experience was really good.

Thanks MarkA - certainly interested to hear more people's experiences on this as I was considering this mainly because of what seems like a more intuitive UI that the Foxsat HDR.

Those are unlikely down to your box I've been having the same on the Humax. I believe it is down to the broadcasters - mainly ITV

It's a very easy to use interface. The box doesn't have the bells and whistles of the Foxsat HDR, but if you don't need these (and I don't really think we do) then I guess this helps the simplicity.

We had another recording failed with an "internal error". Spent a bit more time thinking about this and wondered if we had an issue with one of the tuners. Looking at the "System information" screen, this shows both tuners with a steady signal strength of 91%, tuner 1 has a solid 100% signal quality, but tuner 2 has a signal quality constantly hopping around from 60s to low 90s. Did a bit of swapping around feeds from the dish (it's got a quad LNB ready for a second Freesat PVR !) and found that the issue remained with the tuner and didn't follow the feed. All feeds into tuner 1 give a solid 91% strength/100% quality. All feedsinto tuner 2 give a 91% strength/variable quality. So I suspect that tuner 2 is a bit iffy.

From memory, when we first installed the box, tuner 2 had a quality of 100%, occasionally dropping to 90%. Thought it looked a little odd, but as everything worked fine, put this down to maybe being a quirk of the box. My Digifusion PVRs never quite showed the same results on both tuners, so nothing new. However, this anomaly appears to have become worse over the course of the last 4 weeks. So I suspect that there's an underlying issue with tuner 2 that's steadily getting worse.

Box will be going back to Costco for an exchange this weekend. Finders crossed that the replacement is okay, as I really like the box overall.

Finally watched all the recordings on the old box and took it back to Costco for an exchange at the weekend. Old unit had a date code of 2010/01 and new unit has date code of 2010/04. So should be a different manufacturing batch, but the system information screen reports the same hardware version 1.1. Initial setup completed okay and latest software v2.2.3 downloaded. Good signal strength and quality on both tuners. Steadily started setting up more series link recordings.

All going well until tonight when it's failed to start recording Shooting Stars. Just by coincidence I turned the box on and it immediately started to record. Looking in the library there's a failed entry at the start time with "unexpected internal error" and a second entry where it's started recording part way through. So it seems like an occasional problem coming out of deep sleep mode as this is the same error we got on the first box - doh!

Wondering whether to try putting the box on a time switch so that it gets a full reboot every night. A bit desperate, but if it works.....!!

I've got this box and have not had most the issues here. Maybe have to press the power button on the remote a couple of times before it wakes up. Still, I'd be half way though watching a prog before a Humax would have booted up anyway .

The first box was pretty good at waking up from press on the remote. The second box sometimes seems to need a second or third press to wake up. So far last night's failed recording is the first one on this replacement box, but we've only had it four days!

Overall I like the box. Very easy to use. But it needs to be reliable. However, from what I read, there seems to be an amazing array of problems across all the different manufacturers. Can't believe dual tuner PVRs have been around for about 5 years and they're still so buggy.

More woes with the second box. Couldn't bring it out of standby - the box ended up with both the red and blue LEDs lit on the power button. Power cycle sorted it. The next evening we discovered it had started recording Pengiun Island the previous day.... and was still recording it! 22.5 hours so far. Couldn't stop the recording - just flashed up a brief message that was too quick to read. Ended up power cycling again. That's when we found that it had also failed to record a couple of other programs. No message or reason, nothing.

So it feels like there's either software or hardware grumbles. Overall I like the box, I really do. But it really needs some of these quirks ironing out otherwise I'll be getting a refund from Costco - who have it on offer again in August. Anybody know a way of feeding back experience direct to the manufacturer (possibly Echostar)?

I had two Grundig boxes and binned them both, anything made by Grundig is pure garbage !! Never once had a problem with the Humax.

I couldnt live with the 3 hour wait for the boot up.. I'd never buy the Humax for that reason alone, i'm out lol.

I got a Humax Foxsat PVR on Saturday and I was dreading the boot up time...but it's only about 30 seconds...I can't see what people are complaining about...or does it get slower when you have had the box a while?

No thats it. You can think of the electricity you are saving during the boot.

LOL I will do that then...I was dreading sitting there for minutes at a time! I can do 30 seconds no problem.

Had mine since they first came out.. Only 25 seconds for mine to boot. So maybe they get quicker

It's not instant on but it's not a bother either. My Samsung LED TV takes almost as long to power up. I like the idea that it shuts down completely rather than going into a power hungry standby - hope they don't change it.

From a full power down the Grundig takes about 15 seconds to fully wake up. Having had Digifusions for many years that effectively run constantly (but always "switch on" instantly!) there's a good power saving benefit and no constant background fan noise, but the trade off is a minor wait for the boot up. The box also seems to wake itself up about 5 minutes before a scheduled recording.

One of the odd bugs with the Grundig is that whenever it wakes up, it clearly sends a quick "grab control" burst down the SCART lead (I only have a Sony CRT, no fancy LCD/Plasma) which momentarily distorts or blanks the screen.

I've put a power time switch on the Grundig so it gets a reboot every night. It still does odd things every now and again - like waking it up you sometimes end up with both the red and blue power LEDs lit and a locked box! Last weekend I deleted the second Channel 4 and +1 that appears in the 900s and we haven't had any "unexpected internal errors" since. Early days yet though. Shame as it's a really user friendly box, just a bit unstable. And there's no easy way to feedback to Grundig (Harvard International). I thought their new www.thesupportsite.co.uk would be a step in the right direction........ almost. But no free email support. And no downloads (of any real use, so far).

This is the latest post I can find on the Grundig 500 so I hope someone is still watching the thread. I get failures and run ons as you have previously reported, but have you have had the disk contents completely erased as happened to me yesterday?

Never had the disk contents wiped.

As regards the regular "recording failed due to an unexpected internal error", someone advised to turn off the "Automatic Updates" in the setup. I did this and it really improved the reliability of the box. So I'd suggest you try this.

It's a shame really, I quite like the interface and it's quite easy to use. But it's not reliable, there's no email support, only charged telephone support, and there's been no software upgrade for ages. There's also a dearth of community support on the internet.

We subsequently purchased a DigitalStream freeview PVR and we now use this for most of our recordings. It's rock solid and there's a vibrant support community over on AVForums (DigitalSpy have dropped the ball on this, it's as if they don't even know the DigitalStream exists!). So the Grundig is just used for fill-in capacity, so it doesn't get overworked. Even so, it still fails to record sometimes. Would not recommend anyone to buy one of these. Caveat emptor and all that........!!!

If you want a Freesat HD PVR stick to the Humax, and if you want a Freeview HD PVR, look at the Humax and DigitalStream.

Hope this helps
Cheers
MarkA

I should have asked where you acquired it from and any chance of returning/getting a refund. If there is, take it back as "not fit for purpose" detailing the problems you've had. Then you can buy a box that actually does work.

Bought cheaply off eBay as refurbed, so little likelihood of a refund.
Thanks for the help.

As someone who has used this PVR for some months, may I echo the advice to look elsewhere.

My unit appears to suffer from all of the documented problems. Grundig must be aware of them, but from where I stand there is no evidence of them doing any remedial work. There has been no software/ firmware update for ages.

Personally I cannot wait for this box to die, so that I can buy something that works, and I will then surely pay no heed to recommendations from impartial posters such as GG

Thanks for the input

Well, I decided to get one of these and i'm so glad that I got it from a reputable retailer as it has gone back, twice, second time for good.

Basically as a PVR it's useless... recordings just skipped during playback every few minutes on both units. First unit would black screen for a second or so on the programme you were watching when recording HD programmes at the same time. Second unit would lose signal on the channel you changed to and wouldn't display anything until you selected another channel and went back to it again.

Overall a thoroughly miserable experience and I had such high (blinkered) hopes as the UI is just great - probably as good as any I've used including HUMAX, Sky+ and Sky HD.

I really disliked the FOXSAT HDR interface (well, my other half did especially) so there's nothing left really but to either stay with a minimal Sky subscription or go down the Freeview HD PVR route (which means getting my aerial reconnected!)..

Of course they are not actually made by Grundig.

They were Alba and now Harvard.

http://www.harvardplc.com

Automan