I've noticed several occasions now when I've been watching a DVD, then switched back to the HDD, I get a blank grey picture. Hitting the EPG, or channel up/down buttons do not respond.

My immediate thoughts were that I've momentarily lost the Freeview (due to poor reception/weather), but I also have SKY connected to L3, and changing the Input Select to L3, also made no difference. I could still however use the System Menu's etc, it was just no picture coming out. Checked the scarts were ok etc.

Unplugging the machine, and powering back on, was the only way the picture output came back.

When this grey blank screen appears whilst I'm recording something, it does successfully record the picture though.

Just seems to be a intermittent problem, at the moment

Same thing happened to me on the weekend aftrer I watched a rented film from blockbuster.

A timer clicked in and recorded while we watched the DVD but when the film was done and we flipped back to the tuner the 860 was just outputting a blank screen

Pressing the power button off and back on on the front of the machine resolved it. Never happened before but only just upgrade to the latest firmware so perhaps it's somehting to do with that?

mmm..it's not only me then. Sounds like another software glitch. The only reference I found in the manual about a grey blank screen, was if you're trying to record copy-protected material.
It sounds to me that when you switch from watching a copy-protected dvd (i.e from Blockbusters), back to the HDD, maybe the machine gets confused by thinking you are trying to record something that's copy-protected.

I too only get this problem when I'm, watching original copy-protected DVD's as opposed to blank/re-writables ones. I tried power on/off from the remote, but it didn't make a difference I had switch mine off at the wall, which unfortunately ruined my recording to the HDD


P.S anyone ever got a response from Sony. I've sent them several emails, but never got a reply

Thing is I've done this loads in the last 6 months and this only happened to me for the first time on the Weekend, after the upgrade to the 1.1.09 firmware..

Never got any reply to my mail to them about the missed recordings

Happened again today. Again the machine was timer recording something from the Freeview, and I decided I wanted to watch chasing playback.
No sooner had I taken the machine out of standby, I got the blank grey screen again. I stopped the recording, and when I played it back, the recording played back the picture up till the point when I took the machine out of Standby, and the remainder of the recording weas just a blank grey screen.
It seemed I lost all my freeview channels as is was displaying no signal, so all I was getting was a blank grey screen, even though I could still bring up the EPG menu OK. Tried powering on/off and switching it off at the wall, but no joy. Eventually all channel seemed to come back by themselves after half an hour

The Freeview intermittently disappearing is NOT because of weak signal or bad weather, but it triggered by commands I make with the remote, either when I switch between watching a DVD to HDD, or other commands like powering the machine on.
My conclusion is that the tuner in this machine is badly manufactured.
The only common element I found so far is that this problem has only occured when I've been Timer recording something.


Anyone else having similiar problems.