My husband has purchased the Philips HDRW720, and neither of us have had any experience of these sort of machines before. We've tried for three nights to get the guide plus to load the information and it still hasn't. We have Sky, so like the manual says, we put it on Eurosport, and it didn't work. The machine tells us to put it on channel 501, so we tried that, didn't work.
It's really irritating me that we can't get this feature to work, I think the whole machine is a bit complicated and not very user friendly.

Any advice?

Can't you feed it from a good ole fashioned RF TV aerial feed and let it get the G+ data on analogue ITV1 using its internal tuner?

Cliff

Make sure you've been through the setup process thorughly as shown in the manual, telling the unit you've got a Sky receiver plugged in etc. I think you might also have to tell it what channel number Eurosport is? Have you got ythe infra-red link working?

I've been looking at the Philips range but have now moved my allegiance to Pioneer! It has the same sort of configuration for Guide+, getting its data overnight from Eurosport.

Which brings to to another question - Eurosport is not FTA is it? Which means you can only use Guide+ on these DVD/HDD recorders if you're a Sky subscriber. Is that right, or is there a simultaneous FTA transmission of Guide+? (I cannot use analogue ITV as I have no terrestrial reception where I live).

Guide+ only works with terrestrial ITV and Eurosport on Sky, which as you suggest is not FTA.

As far as I know - whether it's ITV or Eurosport -the guide must have access to the 'analogue' t/text stream

ITV via std aerial lead is best (doesn't occupy your digi tuner) - if you dont have std aerial at all - some digiboxes pass thru the t/text stream and some simply don't (my NTL digibox doesn't)

Some digiboxes have R/F (aerial) output - in which case just plug a std aerial wire in here and straight into the back of the 720

That might be the cause of the OP's problem then.


Would that work?? Presumably you have to tell the recorder that Sky is on the SCART socket, would it therefore even look at the RF input?

I've just done a test...

Went to Eurosport on Sky (I'm no subscribed to the Sports package so I get a "call this number to upgrade" message) then pressed the Text button on my TV remote. I got good old-fashioned 40x24 Eurosport text! So that proves 2 things:

1. My digibox (ancient Pace) passes through teletext (therefore the Guide+ data too as suggested) via SCART
2. You don't need to subscribe to Sky to download the Guide+ data. I even removed the Sky card and it still worked.

Yeap - it would just use the R/F connection to top-up the guide

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Have GuidePlus given any indication of what they are going to do when areas start having their analogue signals switched off, so that this stream is no longer available ?

Yup, someone posted a press release the company made the other day saying something about plans to also deliver it via a data channel on Freeview too.

Cliff

Has anyone noticed if you tune to the ITV analogue signal, the display on the box changes from reading "ITV" to reading "TELE" after about 3 or 4 seconds? Also, it doesn't download the EPG data.

It only started happening to me yesterday, but it is still like that this morning.

I may be stateing the obvious, but i had problems till i left it in standby overnight.

...anyone know of any other burners non-Philips that have this? I know its on Pioneers but they seem to be a lot more expensive for very similar features.

Reason I ask is I'm just about to return my Philips to Amazon. Fantastic machine - it worked a dream for 5 days.

On the 6th day, however, I tried to burn a programme of more than 10mins to a dvd, it started, it ran, it had 3mins left, 2mins, 1minute, 1 minute, 1minute, for about 15mins it had 1minute left, then it switched itself off.

Upon switching it back on it now goes "Philips", starts doing something, the record light comes back on and the drive glows red for a second or so, then it switches itself back off again. I've tried a complete factory reset and it still won't give up the record, nor will it give me my disc back.

It may be a one-off (although the fault is listed online), but having been through strange little glitches like this for several months with a Sony minidisc by which time Comet refused a refund, I'm not gonna take my chances with something else and spend a lot of time messing about with it.

Edit: Unless anyone knows if there is a manual way to force the drive open? Like the hole you stick a paper clip in, on a pc drive? If I could get the disc out, I might just be able to get a "no disc" message instead of this constant reboot game.

List here:

http://www.europe.guideplus.com/En/o...ce/models.html

There appears to be no GUIDE PLUS+ info on our Philips today. Had at least 6 days worth yesterday. Pressing the EPG button just brings up the channel info which without any EPG data gives very little infomation. Our EPG info is based around NTL Langley and Pace. Anyone else had this?

i'm on NTL langley - having a few problems with time changes but otherwise i have 7 day grid

due you switch to ITV (your host) during the night?

Most nights I've done this but from what I've been led to understand leaving the box on standby on any channel will do. Until a few days ago I'd never seen this NTL Bromley/Langley appear. It was just plain NTL then Pace. Sunday everthing was working ok but I switched to NTL Langley. Today the EPG is blank. In fact I could not even get the EPG grid to come up. I did a factory boot and at least the blank EPG grid works now. I've left it on ITV1 for a while now and not one entry. Tried leaving it switched on and off but not a thing. When I first got the Philips it populated the EPG very quickly. I'm very close to Sandy Heath so this may have helped. Only had this box for a few weeks and very happy with it otherwise.

Theoretically !! in reality it cant always find the host itsself so you might have to tune it manually (i do)


EPG updates come in many shapes and sizes, and this is just one


Are you sure you're on Langley - maybe try bromley


Then it will have to download the langley/bromley options again


Updates occur in spurts - about every 6 hours on ITV - but it only takes minutes to fully populate the grid

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Thanks for those comments JethroUK. Just checked and I now have a full 7 days EPG.

Jethro,

Is it normal with your machine that the Philips will only change channel and not power the NTL STB on/off as well?. I don't see why it would be so difficault to have the on/off command sent either side of the channel number being transmitted. It's just a bit of a worry when your away from home and have to leave the NTL STB permently switched on.

Rod

i've never switched my digibox off since i've had it - so i cant say - the 720 will prolly wake the box up, but you might lose first digit during wake up - give it a try

Yep, this is the best work around I can do. I leave the NTL STB on the channel I intend to record to but power it off. Like you say when the Philips attempts to change the channel of the NTL box it manages to power it on with the first digit then fail to complete the rest of the channel number. In failing to do this it leaves the NTL channel as it was. I understand why they do not do the power on/off thing as if like yourself you already have the box on then this would mess it up for you. I'd still like it to have been an option in settings.

This is just a follow-up to let people know about the original situation:

1. We are still unable to access GuidePlus data from Sky.
2. We *are* able to use the manual timer to record programs, including automatically switching the channels on the Sky box.

For reference, we have regular Sky (not Sky+) and our Sky box is a Thompson DSI 4212. We live in the South East UK.

We have the Eurosport channels, but are *not* able to receive teletext on any of them through the Sky box. We *are* able to receive the teletext on ITV through the Sky box.

We have tried the following combinations:

-----------------
Leaving the recorder on standby overnight, and the Sky box on the Eurosport channel.

Leaving the recorder on standby overnight, and the Sky box on the ITV channel.

Leaving the recorder powered on overnight, and the Sky box on the Eurosport channel.

Leaving the recorder powered on overnight, and the Sky box on the ITV channel.

Leaving the recorder on standby overnight, and using a tv aerial to pick up ITV.
-----------------

None of these have worked.

To be fair, we don't have an antenna on our roof, so could only hook one of those powered set-top antennas to the recorder, and the reception is really poor (which is why we bought Sky in the first place -- we can't even get Freeview!)

After 3 weeks, we've basically given up trying to get the GuidePlus to work at all. We just wish that the recorder had an option to disable the GuidePlus menus entirely, because the timer recordings work just fine and it's irritating to have to work through several menu options to get to that functionality.

We didn't buy the Phillips for the GuidePlus, honestly, but it is *extremely* irritating though that they have this "feature" that is completely inoperative. If we hadn't realized that the timed recordings were actually able to change the channel on the Sky box we have, the recorder would be happily winging its way back to Amazon.

(On the subject of timed recordings, we only got this to work after we noticed that the recorder was trying to switch to channel "001" on Sky (Sky channels start at "100") when the recording began. And this was only about a week ago. The Phillips and GuidePlus websites were of no help in any of this, and the manual for the recorder is virtually unreadable.)

In our limited experience, these are the pros and cons of the Phillips:

Pros --
The MANUALLY-PROGRAMMED timed recordings work really well with our Sky box (Thompson DSI 4212)
The hard-drive holds a lot
The quality of recordings are quite good (we have it set to the default settings and haven't bothered to change it)

Cons --
The remote is needlessly complex and half of the buttons are unusable with satellite
The on-screen menus are obtuse and not user-friendly at all
The manual is ridiculous
GuidePlus doesn't work

Some minor annoyances:
I wish that it would be possible to remove the annoying display that the recorder puts on the screen during pausing, fast forwarding, and rewinding the recordings in the buffer. It takes up half the screen, and I really don't need to see all those blue bars and information.

Because of the way the recorder requires you to mark things for recording from the buffer, if you are marking several separate programs in the buffer to be recorded to the hard-drive at once, you have to make sure to work from left to right otherwise it will override your markers.

There should be a way to move recordings from the buffer to the hard drive without having to switch the unit off or switch it into video cam mode. The unit is slow to do either of those things, even without moving recordings.

The fact that you have to press and hold a TV function button on the side of the remote in order to turn the television on and off is annoying as all heck. Especially since if your grip falters on that button, which is a hard plastic knob awkwardly placed on the side of the remote and not a rubberized button on the front like all the others, you accidentally turn off the recorder. This, of course, flushes the buffer -- erasing anything you might have wanted to watch later when you turn your actual TV back on.

Some of these annoyances might theoretically be addressed with future firmware upgrades, but I'm not holding my breath.

Have you got R/F (Aerial) out on your digibox? (some do, some dont)

If so, does it pass t/text stream?

If not - I understand that a cable splitter (one end straight into the recorder) works fine - This is because the raw cable still carries t/text - dont have sky (have NTL) but i dont see why it wouldn't work exactly the same


Clear your postcode from the settings should disable it- Re: the manual programming - you do realise it's compatable with Video+ code too (should take a lot of the leg work out of it)


you didn't say how you sorted this out but are you sure it's set up correctly? (Postcode, Service, Digibox) - latter 2 are updated via downloads and as a result you will find extra settings which you may benefit from - until you get it to download you aren't privvy to this


Press the 'info' button on the complex remote control - likewise to remove it when editing


Any complete recording in the buffer are on the Harddrive, albeit you can't edit them - you should be able to see them unless you have the menu set to 'Delete' order or 'Protected' order


Philips have been using this method for years now (so i find it intuative) and it would take time to get your head round (like switching from a stream of Nokia mobiles to S/Erricson) - They could've added yet another button to an otherwise busy remote control if all it has to do is switch the TV on/off, but you will find that it does a lot more than that - depending on your TV you should be able to access a whole host of feature on your TV by simply holding that button - it does give a glossary in the manual

It doesn't sound like your first choice in a machine - but your pleasure will double once you get the guide working & you can look forward to some enhancement via Radio-Times website (hopefully before xmas)

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I've just bought a Pioneer DVD/HDD unit with Guide+ and can confirm that to setup the Guide+ EPG initially you have to tune to Eurosport, leave the Sky box on, and put the recorder into standby.

For subsequent updates, leave the Sky box on and put the recorder into standby but you don't have to leave it tuned to Eurosport - it will change the channel automatically via the infra red gubbins.

Unfortunately, it appears as though you have got the worst of both worlds:

1. Your Sky box does not transmit teletext via SCART.
2. Your analogue TV reception isn't good enough to receive teletext on ITV.

As someone has suggested, I think the next thing to try is to feed an aerial lead from the Sky box to the Philips so that when Eurosport is selected, the teletext feed comes through the aerial lead instead of SCART. Presumably you need to tune in a channel on the Philips to receive a signal via the aerial lead, and how would you tell the Philips what preset channel number to look at???? Or would it just scan all frequencies on the aerial looking for a teletext feed? Jethro, help!