Next time i buy anything els it wont be a phony oh i mean sony even though i havent had anything go wrong with this exchanged one yet its prolly cause i have hardly used it since i got it and is only a matter of time before it happens. Appart from that its last years model i only brought it last month and cost an arm and a leg for what it is when there were this years models out that cost less for the same specs. Just goes to show how much extra your paying for a brand name.

Had another ruddy locky again last night, my dad had 2 lockys over here in cambridge, it maybe of the weather(thunder lighting) but if thats the case then it's the 1st time the weather has effected my 710, normally thunder has no effect/not even a glitch, anbody else had a locky again last night?

Hi. I'm a newcomer here and have the same lockup, on my second 710 machine. (I returned my first for repair and got a refund instead).

The obstacle appears to be persuading Sony of the problem. Can I suggest that we all keep a methodical diary of lockups, then post them here once we have acquired, say, five lockups. Keep track of dates, times (if possible), what is your transmitter, and maybe what channel was in use. At the moment, all the above messages are too haphazard to collate.

Once we have got a table of say 15people times 5 lockups that we can submit to Sony, they may take notice and spot a pattern.

Sony is populated by real humans: I can't blame them for resisting the evidence a bit. We can make a better case.

I guess just a handfull of people having lock up probs with this product isnt going to bother Phoney considering its probably sold thousands since its release. It would be interesting to know if anyone off this board is having probs with it though. I have looked up the prob on google and dont see any reports of it on the net anywhere so i was thinking it cant be that much of a problem with many people otherwise it would be reported somewhere. Anyonels seen websites other than here that report these problems with this dvdr ?

Hi, new member here too. I found this forum while searching for information on problems with the 710. We've only had our recorder for two weeks and it has locked up three times within the last three days (12th, 13th and 14th) and we've even lost a couple of recordings because of this. It's usually left on Cbeebies. Once it's locked up while I was trying to change channels, and twice while it was recording from BBC TWO and Cbeebies, I think. We've lost both of those recordings.

Should I send it back to the retailer (Amazon) or is this a problem that will sort itself out? I would hate to send it back, as I would really miss it if it was gone even for a few days, but I'm not sure I can live with this problem long-term if it happens on an ongoing basis. Any advice is appreciated, thanks.

Suggestion: maybe we could start a new thread with just the lock-up information, so it's all in one place and easily accessible.

Hi all,

I joined last night but couldn't post until my account was activated by an admin earlier today.

I too found this forum while searching for similar experiences to mine ...

I have had my RDR-HXD710 for two weeks now and it's been spot on apart from a couple of complete lock-ups (which like others I put aside to being 'one of those things') which resulted in me having to hold the power button to reset the device until it displayed 'Welcome' followed by 'Recovery' for some time (after which everything seemed ok apart from recent recordings I'd watched were marked as new again ... almost like that information was sat in volatile memory - I have my own theory that the cause of the lock-ups is a memory buffer not being flushed and being allowed to fill to capacity at which point the machine has no where left to buffer commands).

Anyway ... last night I was watching a recorded program while recording Dragons Den on BBC2. The program ended and the recorder sat in Pause mode on the final frame and I decided to switch to Dragons Den to watch using Chasing play back (about 15 - 20 mins in). The remote commands appear to have been acknowledged by the presence of the red light flashing on the unit but nothing else ... it just sat there and grinned at me! I left it suspecting it may act on the command shortly and sure enough 3 1/2 minutes later it did ... I continued through the operations (with similar pauses between each command) to finally get Dragons Den playing in Chasing Playback mode. I then decided to pause it and it played until 3 1/2 minutes in when it then paused! It got a bit quicker after this and after watching Dragons Den I told the unit to enter standby ... it sat for ages saying power off and then it entered standby; at this point I removed the power cord for a short while and then re-powered. Once re-powered it sat saying welcome for about a minute then again entered 'Recovery' mode for a short time. Once again recently viewed recordings (including Dragons Den) were marked as New in the Title List.


So after reading through this thread with great interest and attention I called Sony at 9am this morning and spoke to Dale Cotter who responded and said he was not aware of such an issue. I told him this is exactly what other people on this forum had said they had been told but clearly there is an issue with the software of this unit. He told me all he could advise me to do was to send the unit back to the retailer or to an engineer. I explained that this was not a sensible thing to do as all that would happen is I would have to take a day of work for collection and delivery (If Argos could replace the unit as it is now End of Life and likely they would only offer a refund), would lose my recordings and would be calling back again when my new unit had the same issues. He said well that was 'at my discretion' and that he wouldn't do any more for me. I tried to explain that there were hundreds of posts on the Digital Spy forum demonstrating that this is an issue with the 710/910 platform and not individual pieces of equipment and offered to relay shared case ref numbers ... he replied saying that I could give him 20 of these and it wouldn't matter he said 'he doesn't listen to [us users], he only listens to their engineers who identify these problems'. I asked how on earth their engineers are meant to know about these issues when they wont listen to their users ... he stated that the only way they find out is by people returning faulty units so again said I need to return mine to my retailer!

Arrrrghhhhh!!! Head needs Brick wall to bash against!!!

He also said that if I share my case ref no then Sony would not promise to protect my details and they would share them with anyone who had my case ref!!!!

As you can imagine my blood is boiling at this amazingly poor excuse for 'customer service' and Sony have rocketed down in my estimation, I currently have a lot of Sony kit but I will think twice next time I am in the market for electronic goods.

So maybe everyone needs to call and ask for Dale Cotter until he realises it really is a problem!!!

Dave (slightly less wound up after sharing my dire Sony experience)

Welcome to the newbies thats just joined us, as davewilcox stated that we should take note of times dates and regions when we get lockys, as we've seen this week, the lockys come in waves and generaly effect most of us at the same time, this is evidence that we need to gather and put to sony and the people who run freeview, some where between these 2 factions is the answer and it needs to be addressed ie sony needs to talk to freeview and vice versa otherwise this will just go on and on.
Last edited by It's only me : 15-09-2006 at 13:34

My advice to anyone who has a new one of these and has probs with it is to get it replaced or a refund. I had one of these n got lockups with it from day one and was given a replacement. I havent had a prob with this new one yet but im hardly using it so it will prolly take longer until it happens.

After suffering with this ssue for a while now I have resorted to t'internet and found you guys.

I have also spoken to a local repair agent, Found on sony site. Who states "There are some "Firmware Upgrades" Although an extensive search of the net has so far yeilded absolutely nothing.. My unit is still in warrenty and will V soon be going to said repair agent.. As soon as I can arrange to deliver it to him. Promises that no data will be lost but he will need the unit for 3 to 4 days.

I will keep you updated.

D

Wow, I'm sure a lot of us here will be watching how you go on with interest and then all asking you where the dealer is if he does upgrade your firmware!

Mine locked up again earlier on, I had been A-B erasing a film to remove adverts on HDD, I then told it to High Speed dub to a DVD-R (still haven't managed to get this to work with a DVD+RW but I gather that is a common fault too?), while dubbing I told it to change channel ... it did but the program banner remained at the top of the screen, no sound and completely unresponsive to buttons on the unit and remote yet it continued to and finished dubbing and front display appeared to act as normal. After 5 mins it was another reboot and into recovery mode on it's way back up

Dave

Hi,

Tried to post a couple of days ago, but the forum was down.

Our 710 has just locked up again after several wks/months without any lockups. This time it was recording on the wrong channel and it would not respond to any button presses (remote ctrl or front panel), so ended up resetting by holding down the on/off button until the "welcome" appears, followed by recovery etc....

And another lockup as of 10 minutes ago. These things definitely seem to come along in batches.

I just thought I would add to the lock up saga that seems to be plaguing these "expensive" machines.

We have had an HXD910 for 7 months and in that time it hasn't had any issues. That was until last night. We had just finished watching a DVD and I went to power off the unit as normal. The only difference is that this time the "Power Off" message stayed on, and on, and on. Eventually after a 10 minute wait I resorted to pulling the plug, and rebooting. Today, the unit seems to be on a total go slow, menus take an age to appear and several channels and not viewable. I have powered off once again and decided to come searching on these forums to see whether others have experienced any problems. Imagine my when I found this thread.

Clearly this problem is widespread and clearly Sony are aware of the issue but not admitting anything. This kind of behaviour by a massive corporate is simply unacceptable. Having spent nearly £600 on this unit I expect it to do its job, otherwise it is "unfit for purpose". There are obviously some firmware issues that need to be resolved and Sony need to be held accountable.

I look forward to bradshawd's findings on his firmware update, but something tells me that it is a false hope.

Rod.

Yet more and more people join the list ... mighty odd that not one Sony support Rep has heard of such a problem before ... Do you think Watchdog would be interested in such a case? Any volunteers to contact them ... I'm sure everyone here and a whole host more people would be happy to co-operate.

Yep - another lock-up late on sunday afternoon - this time the machine was "parked" on ITV1 (hangs head in shame)....

"Which" gave this machine a glowing report - I'll be penning a letter to them later this week.

I also advise everyone to log a call with Sony and get the call reference number which you should share with this group.

Well i was just watching Sky nothing was on so i put freeview on the dvdr and guess what happened a lock up on itv1 when i was changing channels. So i had to reboot, Have left it off now and sky is back on Phoney have lost a customer in me.
Last edited by bekko2006 : 17-09-2006 at 19:51

Funny, that despite this major fault, I'm reluctant to send my 710 back for a replacement or a refund. I'm not quite convinced that other units/models/brands don't have a similar fault, or something else wrong with them. I really like this machine, and I'd even be willing to put up with the occasional lock-up, as long as it doesn't happen too often. However, if it becomes an ongoing nuisance, I will have no choice but to get rid of it.

Can anyone recommend a macine of a similar calibre that has a good track record, please? I'll wait a few months to give the 710 a fair chance (we only just got it a few weeks ago) but realistically, if this problem persists (and there's no easy fix) we'll have to get it replaced.

Just to add another voice to the list. Had my 710 since last November and only had one previous episode of it locking up a few times about six months ago. At that time I shifted everything off the HDD onto RWs and then reformatted. When doing this it was clear that one programme was corrupted (the machine crashed every time I highlighted this entry in the title list). Reformatting seemed to resolve the issue for the past four months but have had 3 or 4 lockups in the last two weeks. Just been through the long process of clearing and reformatting the HDD in the hope that will work but am sceptical because this time the lock ups tend to happen when changing freeview channels. Hope Sony do a software upgrade soon. I'm surprised there haven't been any because my Sony VTX-D800U has had various upgrades as described by Sony on their helpful site http://www.npe.sony.co.uk/faq.html . Strange Sony don't provide a similar site for their PVRs.

Excellent news about and good luck with the letter mate.


I have logged a call with Sony but am reluctant to share the ref no following the comment from Dale Cotter @ Sony (perhaps this should go in the letter to Which also - surely can't be compliant with the DP act ... issuing Sony with a case ref means they are free to pass on all of that persons data to anyone)



I have to say I feel the same way ... the unit I think is a well built and well performing unit except for these anoying Lock-ups ... and a replacement I really don't feel will do anything but cause me more inconvienience by way of lost recordings on the HDD and time off work to wait in for replacement

Dave

Just to add to this...

No lockups for a few months, then one last week when everyone else got them and two yesterday.

In both cases yesterday the lockup occured when changing channel from 002 to 003 using the channel up button on the remote.

London TV region if that's of use.

Steve

Sounds to me like the freeview part in these dvdrs are naff, considering the stand alone sonys are supposed to be one of the best im way dissapinted in this one.

lock up 17th sep 22.21 on bbc3
lock up 18th sep 8.50 on bbc1
lock up 18th sep 9.02 on bbc1
All my lock ups seem to involve the bbc. when i change to or from a bbc channel. know idea why.

As I work for the BBC, I know a few people who I can ask at our R&D department.

Steve

Hi guys I've had my 710 for about two months now and am have the same problems as everyone else by the sounds of it.The lock ups do seem to come in waves I've just gone about a month without one but have had four in the last three days the last being sunday night at around eight ish thinking seriously about returning it but would a new one be just as bad?

steverobertsbbc- I and all the rest of us here on this forum eagerly await your report, please please fingers crossed say its a firmware issue! because if that is then sony can ruddy do something about it(we hope)
Last edited by It's only me : 18-09-2006 at 17:36