Hi

I have had a Onn PVR which is the Vestel T816 for about 5 years with V3.7 software. It had it's problems at time with lockup, loss of signal or recording issue and following a powering off/on a few day ago following a crash & loss of TV signal, it will not now start up, it displays "Starting" and sometimes followed by "wait". I have checked the 160Gig using the Western Digital program listed on this site, which the quick check says is ok.

The Power Supply unit looks ok with correct 5 & 12v to the HD.

Does anyone have any suggestions please?

Also, I still have an older T810 80Gig unit, could I transfer the HD to that one to play what is still on the T816, are the file formats the same?

Thanks
Richard

The drives should be interchangeable between the T810 and T816. However, the first thing I'd suggest is to disconnect the HDD from the T816 (both cables) and then see if it'll boot up - without a HDD it should boot up fine, and complain about no HDD and say recording capability not available, or something along those lines. Will help give you some idea whether the HDD is faulty or if it is the box itself, before risking swapping the HDDs.

Regarding WD Lifeguard, the extended test would be more useful - the quick test will not detect bad blocks.

Thanks for the suggestion, I have now diconnected the HD and it will still not start up, still the same "Starting" display so it looks like a failure on the main board. I may attempt to try & reload the software at some point, if that's possible. Do now have a T835 model which came with V4.6 software & just missed the v4.8 OTA update of last week. Were a few issues to start with, but now settled down as I read V4.6 has some "bugs".

Yes, it would be worth hooking up the box to a PC to see if the bootloader serial output is normal. If you try your T816 HDD in your T810, and it works, then this will of course confirm a hardware issue on your T816 - it could be a PSU issue rather than the mainboard.

Don't worry too much about missing T835 v4.8 - it really isn't much better than v4.6, if at all. Hopefully there will be another OAD soon to fix all the problems and return the box to v3.4-like stability.

Thanks for the suggestion which I try soon.

One issue that I have always had with the T816 is that some recordings would increase the time to someting like 2hr 43min and could then clash with others scheduled one which would then fail to record, if more than 2 were attempting to record. The extended time could happen some time before, or even a short time before start time and could happen to a number of timer setting. Either deleting and re-entering them, or if in progress, pressing record on the extended time usually cleared the issue. Did report it to Asda who did not know of the issue at the time in 2008 and had it replaced under warrantee, but the new one was the same. Did upgade firmware to a version that was not officially released, which did clear this issue, but had to revert back due the other bugs in that version which made it less reliable.

Has anyone else had similar problems as I have never seem any postings. It is not a Transmitter issue as I have used it in various UK locations while away in a caravan and it still happens.

Thanks

Yes, this is a known issue - the background behind it is that part of the Freeview spec dictates that a timed recording should be extended by 3 hours or so (I forget the exact formula) if there are problems with the start/end signals for a recording. The caveat being that this condition is being triggered on the T816 when it really shouldn't be. The odd thing is that I only saw the problem extremely rarely when I first got the box, but the problem developed over some time, so it is probably some issue triggered by technical changes in the Freeview transmissions. Unfortunately, there is no solution - as you say, the v6.8 software does fix it, but it brings new problems. It doesn't affect the T810, of course, as that uses time based timers and not accurate recording event signals.