I have a DTR80 which I have to say is excellent, despite the odd little niggles due to programmes overrunning and not picking up an end signal - at least that's better than switching off too soon.

A few weeks ago I set the box to record a film on Channel 5. When the time came for it to record, it said it was not possible as there was no signal. I switched to 5 and there was nothing, a blank screen, not even the 'no signal' box. Tried forward/back as that sometimes works, but nothing. Signal strength here is good to very good, within line of sight of transmitter and no problems before. So, resigned to not recording, I left it a while and tried again. Signal was back, so I hit record. After a while I checked it again, and the screen was blank, no 'no signal' box just a blank screen. I kept checking throughout the duration of the film and sure enough, signal was sometimes there, sometimes not.

OK, so I expected the box to have recorded huge chunks of nothing interspersed with bursts of the film - that's what you'd expect, right? Wrong - it recorded perfectly, right through and even switched off when the film was over. Weird, eh? It's not happened before or since, so quite what happened there is a mystery. Before you say, disk full, I was only at about 75% at the time, so not that.

So, if you get a similar 'no signal' error, might be worth just checking yourself and hitting record, you never know, it may just work!

BTW, does anyone know if it's possible to record onto the disk from an external DVD?

Hi,

Have a look at http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...d.php?t=719104

Intermittent problems experienced with SDN Mux A that carries five. May be the reason.

Sounds like the ideal time to reboot the PVR if you ask me . I've had similar things happen, and the T816 can sometimes get itself into a bit of a muddle. Also, note that if you were just recording one channel, you would have been using one tuner to record it and the other tuner when viewing it live. If the PVR happened to be recording from the other tuner, the recording may well have messed up, but when watching it live it would have been ok.

But, as I say, when things like this happen, it's a good idea to reboot (hold the power button for 5 seconds). Just the other week my T816 decided it didn't want to record anything, giving the error "cannot start recording, channel not in channel list" or something like that. That's another of the strange things that can happen if the T816 has had a long uptime (usually weeks, rather than days, fortunately ).

That's interesting, I've don't recall ever having to reboot my T816, and I've not had the 'can't start a recording message'. Infact I don't think it's ever failed a recording. I've not used the search facility within the EPG for a while now as I know that can cause 'hickups'.

As a slight aside, is holding the power button down for 5s equivalent to switching the mains power off/on? It certainly beats climbing behind the TV to get at the mains plug.

Colin

Some of the problems may well be caused by signal 'blips'. An extreme case of a blip being removing and reconnecting the aerial lead(s) while the PVR is still switched on - I've done this on occasion, and the PVR can get itself in a mess in such situations, requiring a reboot. Therefore, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume that even minor interference could cause the PVR to get confused.

Regarding the 'channel not in channel list' message, I guess I should say I've only had it happen a handful of times, and that's spanning almost 12 months usage of my T816.

Pretty much, yes. There are a few instances where the PVR can lock solid though, and won't respond to the power button being held down, so pulling the plug is the only choice then. I always use the reboot trick at all other times.

Thanks, I'll try that in future. I've only had to reboot one since Christmas I think. That was on the occasion when I was getting frequent Live TV freezing after using the Search facility (the first occurrence of that since Christmas too). The usual suggestion of setting to standby did not clear the freezing this time but a reboot did.

Colin

Hi all.

I had the refusal to record problem regularly with the older T810 box. I would set up the program to record, and come back some hours later to find it hadn't due to it not liking the signal strength.

It is to be remembered that boxes measure both quality and strength (both indipendant!) - ie, you might have brill' strength, but poor quality, and vice versa. Perhaps by manualy asking the box to record, it overode any limitation it placed onto recording automatically (that is, it allows the user to record 'come what may'), and hence would not restrict the recording. As to the recording being fine, when the picture said 'no strength', it might be that the recording was being made from the other tuner (and there might be differences in sensativety between the two), or more likely, the signal quality was fine, although strength was intermitant, and recording is done idependantly of display. Recording is done purely of the TS stream data, so if packets are received ok and complete, it makes no difference as to what the strength of the signal was, unlike for an analogue signal, which depends largely on the strength.

Sometimes, just a quick re-tune of the box can help, as broadcasters are forever altering and making small changes to the frequancy of transmission etc, with no warning! I had C4 perfectly on one aerial for a long while, then it suddenly disapeared and I thought my aerial and amp was at fault. After reading other parts of the forum relating to broadcasting of freeview, I realised quite often these changes are made, and hence re-tuning immediately restored C4. As it was, my amp had gone as well, but this was purely coincidental! (just to confuse matters ).

Regards,

Tim.

Yes I discovered When freezing bug happens a workaround is to record the program.