We purchased the above within the last month, replacing our Freeview boxand video recorder. However we are experiencing problems which may be a hard disk error.

Problem one
The hard disk first of all stated 30 hours of free disk, then after I did a reboot it went up to 60 hours. I thought this model had over 100 hours of free disk?

Problem 2
Every other recording seems to be corrupted. Last nights Eastenders failed to record (though the box came on), Saturdays Dr Who and last week the same happened. It has also been freezing around 8pm!

Is this a hard drive problem and do we need t otake the box back to Tesco? Our aerial is fine as this was changed wen we got the freeview box a few years ago. We use Watnall (Nottingham)

I've has similar problems recently with any recordings failing instantly. I took the HD out and checked that and it was fine and then found out how to do a factory reset / HD format.

If you don't use TUTV - go into the TUTV menu and deactivate all the channels.

Then so long as you don't have any recordings you want to keep do the following:-

Restore to factory settings (keeps the latest firmware though):- menu > help > green button > red button

Format the Hard Drive (this should give you 99% free for recordings):- Menu, Set-up (4), Help (6), hidden Advanced Info (green), Format HDD (blue)

You'll lose the series link option until the EPG gets updated at 11.30pm - but since doing this our "dead" box is now working perfectly again.

Thanks, but ihave done both of those in the last week, this is how the disk space increased! however, we still have olny 60 hours when the instructions state 160 hours. Since then, the series link has never popped up again. We are not interested in TUTV so I may try that one.

if you read the side of the box, it says the following:

Different channels broadcast at different bitrates (quality)

BBC channels broadcast at the highest quality.

Channel 5 and those channels on the same Mux (group of channels, frequency) broadcast at the lowest quality.

So if you recorded everything from BBC channels, then it will probs fill the HDD up with around 70 hours.

If you record everything from channel 5 etc, then you may well get UPTO 120 hours recorded.

Now not everyone records things from the same channels, so the DTR can only estimate how much disk space is left, and errs on the side of caution.

Once you start filling the box with your own recordings, you will see that you will get alot more hours of progs than you think you will.....unless you record everything from the BBC channels