Hi There,

I have a Digihome PVR80 which is probably about 18 months old now. Its unfortunatly developed a strange problem. If i watch the live tv, its fine... but, if i try to record anything, as soon as the record symbol appears the picture and the recorded program goes all jittery, with gaps every second. If i then stop the recording, the picture returns to normal. If i record one channel and watch another, it too is jumpy and glitchy. Also, ive noticed that if i delete a program from the hard drive whilst i can here a program in the background, the sound drops out for a second whereas it never did before. Previously recorded programs playback fine. I've tried resetting the box by holding the power button in for 5 seconds, ive tried unplugging the box and leaving it over night, and ive just tried formatting the hard drive, but nothing has helped. Is the box faulty or could the hard drive be on its way out? Any ideas would be great cos its really annoying now not being able to record programs.

Thanks.
Simon

Replacing the hard drive is not too difficult if you are technically competent. What I did was to replace it with a 2.5 inch drive (which uses less power only 5 V where as the 3.5 inch drive uses 12V and 5 V). Since then I have not had any problems as the drive is not stressing the PSU as much..
Last edited by AJ1000 : 10-04-2008 at 20:08

I exprienced the exact same problem about a year ago (I've had my box a year and half as well!). I found that if I replace the batteries in my ariel it resolves itself.

AJ1000, can you tell us which 2.5 inch drive you have. And what is the difference in the noise it makes from the standard 80gb. I'm not up on modern interfaces and was worried that a more advanced hard disk would be incompatible.

I will get the details later on. The 2.5 inch drive makes a big difference in terms of noise as it is whisper quiet and uses less voltage than the 3.5 inch drive. Obviously the 2.5 inch drive is more expensive. I used a Western Digital 2.5 inch IDE drive.

There are a few things you should know first. You need a 3.5 to 2.5 inch adaptor and 2.5 inch drive screws [including rubber washers if possble] (I got mine from Maplins).

Also the 2.5 inch drive needs to be formatted in Ext2 format, otherwise the box may have trouble identifying it, so you need software which can format the drive to Ext2 (I used partition magic).

Once it has been formatted and put in the PVR, the first thing I did was format it using the format option in the box and then it worked trouble free.

I have done this to two boxes, one was a T816 and the other was a T825, and it worked fine (I am sure the T810 boxes will work as well).

The other thing is if you can't get the 2.5 inch drive to work, you can always put the 3.5 inch drive back in, so you do not lose anything by trying.

The result a noise free box. It was fiddly but it was worth doing.

The drive I used was a Western Digital WD2500BEVE (250GB) version.

Did the box recognise the full 250GB?

Yes, it did recognise the full 250GB. The T816 and T825 do recognise the full 250Gb, the T810 only recognises 120GB.

Oh My T810 is 160gb, I'm sure they were made with 80gb and 160gb.

parthena

I seem to recall the T810 having a limit, perhaps it was 160GB not 120GB.

I'm having the same issues as you fireballuk2001, although on mine its only on certain channels that the jittering occurs.

My guess is that theres interference getting to one of the tuners. The aerial loop through cable on mine looks pretty weedy, so i might change it as it might be the first tuner (when recording) causing interference on the 2nd tuner.

Ill let you know if it works

It may have been a typo but to format your disk (and lose all recordings) you need to hold the "OK" button during boot up not the power button.

My Mother in Law has a T810 80GB (which has just died). If I put a new 160 GB drive in this will it be recognised? If so to what extent eg will it show correct space useage?

Just an update to my ongoing problems with M -in - Law's Digihome which may be useful to others.

Box suffered an electrical spike, after which on booting it just stuck on "Disk check - please wait". Holding the "ok" button during start up would not force a disc format, at which point I declared the box and / or hard drive to be dead.

I had a spare 60 GB drive that I formatted in my PC. I used a USB caddy and formatted it as Linux EXT2 using Paragon Hard disk manager (other programs will do the same thing).

The Digi recognised this disk, did it's own quick format and away we went. This was only ever a temporary measure as 60 GB is too small but it was a good test.

I then decided to put the original "dead" 80 GB in the caddy to see if the PC could do what the Digi could not. 3 mins later I had a formatted EXT 2 drive , I put this back into the box and it worked as good as new!!

We were all set to go to Asda and spend £70.

Nice work!
I'm saving your info for future reference.
Thanks.

In my desktop PC, I have the operating system and programs on a drive dedicated to C: and data on a second drive which I can unplug and use its cable for mucking around with other IDE drives. So I wouldn't need a caddy, would I? Or does it serve a purpose I'm not aware of, in my ignorance?

Just checking, as my PVR160 has frozen again since I freed up lots of space in the early hours of this morning (it's OK for the moment, but I must be prepared!).

So pleased you've fixed it

parthena

Have you opened the box? It maybe that the IDE cable has got loose.

No you wouldn't need a caddy. Obviously if you do have one then it is usually much easier to put the damaged hard drive in it and just plug it in via USB. The caddy is really just a device of convenience, not necessity.
Good luck with yours.
Last edited by Shaddax : 19-04-2008 at 18:41