You can add me to the list of recent lockups.

Unit has been working fine until a few weeks ago when it started randomly locking (remote & unit buttons).

I have followed the advice here, turned off updates and rescanned the channels which seems to have helped somewhat.

What has always puzzled me is that after I do a reboot the unit starts whatever it starts at 04:00 and usually by about 04:09 it stops.

However, after a few days or weeks it then doesn't stop whatever it's doing until 07:00 on the dot.

Usually that is a cue for me to reboot it as I'm not keen having the fan whirring away for 3 hours on a daily basis because it does seem that once it starts it's 07:00 stop it never recovers back to 04:09(ish).

Yep I rang the number above and eventual spoke to Wil Wlson (only after I'd really wound them up). Trouble is I just presumed the machine was dead and was going to replace it sometime; so had just left it sitting there unused. I've seen other recorders being sold on Ebay with the same symptoms. The reality is thousands of people could have been affected and just thought their machines were not worth repairing.

I hsd exactly the same problem and it was driving my crazy - complete lockups at random and i was almost on the point of sending it back to sony for repair (big hassle) when someone told me to switch off auto software and timer updates and in the last month ive done that its not crashed once.
So anyone out there with a crashy 710 then switch off auto updates function!

Hello,

I have just been given an HXD-910 machine (not new!) and then found this thread....all pages of it!!!

Would I be right in assuming that the most upto date version of S/W to be V1.00.03 ? (my machine is still at V1.00.00)

and that my best option is to keep "auto update" set to OFF....at least for the time being.

Also any ideas of when SONY will next send an OTA upgrade.

Thanks

Mrtelstra.

See answers in bold above!

Thank you for your response.

Happy Christmas.

Hi, all its been some months since I last posted on this site, and the machine is still working fine, I am still on version V1.00.00 with the updates off . I feel for all the people who tried to get sense out the UK call center (joke) I meant UK India I think I probably was the first to find out that Sony had moved to our expense. I can't see Sony ever correcting this fault in the lifetime of the units.
Regards,
John

this seems to have done the trick for me.
why they couldn't have 'fessed up and saved me months and months of lock-ups is beyond me.

But, yes, it works.

My 710, now 2 years old, first locked up about 2 weeks before Xmas - did it about 3 or 4 times. Resolved the problem by unplugging power lead and plugging back in. Hadn't done it since then, but did it again last night. It was after a shuffling of the Freeview channels, and I noticed that some channels were missing from the EPG - I realised it was because I had hidden some channels, and now wonder whether this had something to do with the lockups. I have now unhidden all channels, and will see whether the problem recurs. One other thing that I have noticed - the machine has stopped switching itself on at 6.00 in the morning for it's daily update!

Turn off the auto updates as mentioned in previous threads. This will not prevent teh machine from updating the EPG etc but does stop it form trying to update the firmware. This WILL prevent the machine from freezing. Mine has now been OK for over 4 months

Ita a black art, I switched off the updates, and low and behold the dam thing froze.

I have now gone bank to updates,however since then the fan now and again wont stop,when the machine is in sleep mode, thank god the 710 only had one tuner.

Bob

Hi, has anyone had the problem of not being able to pause live TV, I have tried all the reset functions but all I get is a warning stating "Can not begin pause TV" any idea's.
John.

Ill give mine a go, hell of a gale at the moment,feel the power is about to go, lots of flickering, so ill wait till Wed.

Off to light the reserve oil lamps.


Bob

Are you on HDD mode (as opposed to DVD Mode)? Also do you have enough free space on your Hard Disk? You probably know already but it wont pause while recording something and also it wont record encrypted channels so I suspect therefore won't pause them either.

Dave

I don't know what happened? but now I can pause live TV once again. Over the last few nights I have recorded the Sopranos on More 4 and instead of switching off as programed
I get 99 chapters instead the usual 16. I fear the worst is 2 years all we can expect from a Sony product.
John.

Hi folks
Just thought I'd drop in as I've been having problems with my 710 lately.

Generally its been behaving itself for the past 6 months or so, but like a lot of people on here recently it seems, I've been having lock-ups or 'go-slow' issues almost daily for the past week or so.

Always seems to be when I'm watching or recording BBC1 which is a pain. I can live without channels like Five Life and Five US, which have been problematic in the past, but BBC1?

A couple of days ago I had set it to record one of the Pop Britannia programmes off of BBC4 using the EPG.
When I checked it later, it had started recording BBC1 instead, and from about 10 minutes after it should have started recording BBC4. When I tried to stop the recording, guess what? the unit had locked up.

Holding down the power button for 10 secs always kicks it back to recovery mode, and of course unplugging the unit altogether for a while seems to help. Although only for a day or so at present.

I've decided to turn off the updates like a lot have suggested.

I'll see how that goes.

I've been following this thread for a while and turning off updates seems to help. Of course that does mean that if Sony ever do release an update to fix the problem properly, I won't get it. I should keep checking the engineering channel schedule page to catch an upgrade... but I never remember/can't be bothered.

Plan B was to play with Yahoo pipes to create an RSS feed for the same info. It survived this week's refresh reasonably well, so in case anyone else is as blindly optimistic about getting a fix as I am, here's the pipe:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/jtonline/freeview_updates

When I tackled SONY with respect to OTA S/W correction to the HXD710/910 this is the response that I received:


Dear Mrfreeview

I would like to confirm that Sony does carry out extensive tests on all its products, prior to release.

Occasionally after the product has been released Sony releases updates, which are designed to enhance the usability of the product and in some cases to correct issues that where not detected during the testing of the product.

I would like to advise that updates for the RDR-HXD910 where made available by over the air transmissions, as these updates where transmitted over air they where free to owners of the product, at the time of transmission.

Following an over air update to a product, which became corrupted during transmission, Sony is not producing any over air updates, for any products, at the present time. It is therefore necessary to refer to an authorised service centre to perform the update to your product.

If your Sony RDR-HXD910 is no longer covered by the 12 month manufacturer's guarantee, you may be charged for this update, by the service agent.

Yours sincerely

Nicholas Burbridge
Customer Information Centre
SONY UNITED KINGDOM LTD




So there you have the answer... no more OTA software updates are planned by SONY!!!

Is the curruption point just an excuse to make you pay for an upgrade at a service centre? or was the upgrade really corrupted?

And as the OTA is used by many manufacturers was it perhaps not the broadcaster that was at fault but SONY who would have compiled the upgrade.

I have to say since I turned off the Software Upgrade option in my HXD910 I have never, touches-head, had a lockup.

At very long last, someone has an answer. Well done Mr Freeview!

I wonder which upgrade it was that became corrupted during transmission? He doesn't say it was the one for the 710/910, etc. but it doesn't take a genius to make the link!

Point is, if Sony are not going to support OTA upgrades, should we not start some sort of fuss demanding that they make them available for internet download so that they may be installed from a CD - in the same way as they have done with an upgrade for the new 870?

It seems I can count myself lucky that I got the corrupted download from Sony resulting in them having to pick it up and returning it free of charge and with the latest V1.00.03 firmware installed.

Strange world isn't it

for the firest time in months, I played a DVD in my 710,and afterwards the dam thing locked up,had to cut the power,then it worked ok.


Bob

Auto Software update feature turned off in your machine..is it?

I have had an RDR-HXD710 for nearly 2 years, it was OK for the first 8-9 months, then locked up like everyone's experience. A reset cleared things and it continued OK for a few more months. Lately, however it has got progressively worse. I was lucky if I could record one programme without lockup.

Sony were of course no earthy use (no record of any problems like that mate !) The fault manifests itself in many guises - apparent system lockup, no response to remote, continuous "info write" message on display, no info in EPG, wrong title/channel on title list, cannot edit programme name, starts recording and fails to stop, doesn't record at all etc.

I had a similar lockup problem with an Acorn compatible computer. The manufacturer was superb and suggested the most likely problem - Hard Drive power connector (and he was totally correct)

I wondered if the common factor with the recorder lockups could just be the same problem - loss of communication with the hard drive due to power supply glitches from a bad connection on the power connector.

I decided to investigate, removed the cover, demounted the HD cage, removed the 4 pin power connector (and the IDE cable to avoid damage), squeezed the power sockets on the cable connector, refitted the connectors and reassembled the whole assembly.

It's been running fine for almost 2 weeks and has recorded about 35 programmes without incident. This may not be everyones solution, but I reckon it could be mine !

I went through a phase of lockups and each time I was unplugging and replugging to clear it.

From the info here I then started using the 10 second trick to reboot.

After a few days it locked again.

My eventual ploy seems to have fixed it, for the time being as I have had no lockups now for a few months.

I followed the advice here in a previous thread that suggested not only rebooting but also setting as many options as possible to 'factory default' first.

Yes, it was a pain having to set it all up again including channels, but so far so good.

Software Upgrade set to OFF?