I've not had this before. If it's confused about the size of the buffers, see if adjusting the buffer length has any effect.

Agreed, that was the first thing tried in fact, the "trick mode" buffer length was reduced to 10 mins but no difference.

I've seen the problem (apparent loss of a tuner) on rare occasions, but certainly not in that consistent fashion.

You seem to have established that this problem is related to the "new" PSU working in conjunction with one particular hard drive, so I'm puzzled as to why you thought reverting the firmware might fix it. I'm even more puzzled about how you managed to revert back two versions of firmware, given that only two images are stored in flash memory!

I don't know anything about this PSU repair kit, but I would suggest powering the drive from a separate PSU to confirm that this is the problem (that's what I do with mine as a permanent solution to the drive I use not working at all with the inbuilt PSU!)

You misunderstand - I reverted from 0.3.9 to 1.7.7 then back to 0.3.9. If the problem didn't happen under 1.7.7 then I would have found that information useful as it would have eliminated other possibilities.


The drive spins up and works perfectly. It was previously powered from a separate PSU but the problem persisted. The symptoms suggest some kind of file system corruption, possibly created at the time of the PSU failure. If I were to re-initialise the drive it would probably work fine but that would mean losing all the recordings, all 120GB of them. I'm not keen to do that so I'm banking on someone else having had this experience and found a solution.

The current (final) firmware is 2.3.9, so your post seemed to be saying that you'd reverted to 1.7.7, and then further reverted to the year dot version (which was 0.something). I presume you mean 2.3.9, not 0.3.9, and that you have simply toggled between the last 2 versions.


Well, if you've tried a separate PSU then I'm inclined to agree with you. Presumably BUFF001.PES has been rendered permanently unwritable and only BUFF000.PES can be used.

I don't think any of the utilities created to read the DHD4000 filesystem allow write access, but it might be worth checking.

Problem solved. It appears that the last recording made before the PSU failed was causing some kind of disk format corruption (I guess the PSU was partially failing during the recording, the video was definitely more jittery than normal). A hunch led to me watching the programme then deleting it, and then all was well again!

Mentally filed for future reference!

You're right, I meant 2.3.9.


The one at http://www.hope.co.nz/projects/fusion/ does when in GUI form: I could have extracted everything, reformatted the existing drive, and transferred it all back again... I think. A concept I didn't get as far as proving, now unnecessary.

Handy thread here in case of future problems.

I've no intention of scrapping my DHD4000 for quite a while. The smaller hard disk actually encourages me to watch things quicker rather than let many hours of shows build up only to be ultimately deleted without viewing.

I don't want rid of mine either, the dual channel live buffering is particularly useful and I'm not aware of any other PVR that does this. The only problem is that since 2.3.9 it often fails to remember where you paused one channel buffer when you switch to the other one then switch back later. The buffering itself still works and it just means having to wind back at 64x to get back to where you left off.

The PSU board is the same one as used in the Grundig GDS3000 satellite receiver (well-known for being unreliable) and is easily fixed for under £8.00 if you can wield a soldering iron and solder sucker, see RELKIT 33e on http://www.satcure.com/gds200.htm for the parts (other sites/suppliers offer similar kits, search for the PSU part number of PSSH370603A). All this kit is is just a collection of about 15 replacement capacitors, just higher quality ones which should mean your DHD4000 can continue to be around for a while yet.

We bought our DHD4000 just as they were being withdrawn! But we have really got on well this model. We recently went on a fortnight holiday, and the 40GB drive limited what we wanted to record. So following advice in this forum (some from quite a while back), I dug out a redundant 80GB Seagate drive which had come with my PC when new, yesterday I swapped them. I had formatted the drive using the Vista utility, and I am still not sure whether that was any good, because the PVR was slow to respond to remote commands, but in the engineering menu, I chose to format again, and left it running. When we came back from shopping, it was back running at normal speed (maybe a little faster, but that may be wishful thinking). Had to wait until overnight for the 14 day EPG to load, but we managed with "Now and Next" for yesterday, and did one manually programmed recording. The software version was not affected, and the only downside is a slight increase in noise when we did an overlapped recording, but we have double our recording capacity, and I now see no reason to replace this reliable PVR.

My DHD400 has stopped working. When I turn the power on the red light on the front flashes for a few seconds then goes solid red, I can hear a ticking noise coming from the box, I assume that's the hard drive. The machine won't start though. I've tried pressing all the buttons on the front panel and also on the remote but nothing happens. Does anyone have any ideas how I might get this box working again?

Generally when you plug power in, the light flashes orange a few times while the hard drive spins up, then there's a bit of clattering around on the HDD, and finally the fan spins up to full speed and drops back to normal followed by the red LED. You can then power up using the panel front button or remote STB button.

If there's a lot of hard drive tidying up to do then you might be waiting a bit while it does it's thing but you won't get anything out of it until the red light comes on.

When you say "turn the power on", do you mean from the remote (i.e to bring it out of standby), or by plugging the unit into the mains?

With any weird behavior, the first thing to try is to unplug it, wait 30 seconds, and then plug it back in. Apologies if that's what you've already done.

I've tried switching it off at the mains a number of times (in fact i left it disconnected all last night). When I plug it into the mains the red light flashes for a few seconds then goes solid red. Niether remote or front buttons can take it out of standby. I've tried removing the aerial as well but this makes no difference.
Any ideas?

Not really. If it was mine, I'd try reseating the internal connectors, and if that failed, I'd try another hard drive. A partial PSU failure is another possibility - but I'm not sure if that fits your symptoms (perhaps someone who has suffered one could comment!). I suppose I'd be poking around with a meter checking voltages.

Yes, exactly (and I really mean "exactly") the same symptoms as mine when it failed, and there is a solution but it involves using a soldering iron and solder sucker to replaced some capacitors on the power supply board. See post 35 above.

The PSU board is the same one as used in the Grundig GDS3000 satellite receiver (well-known for being unreliable) and is easily fixed for under £8.00 if you can wield a soldering iron and solder sucker, see RELKIT 33e on http://www.satcure.com/gds200.htm for the parts (other sites/suppliers offer similar kits, search for the PSU part number of PSSH370603A). All this kit is is just a collection of about 15 replacement capacitors, just higher quality ones which should mean your DHD4000 can continue to be around for a while yet.

I recall mine did a similar thing when the PSU died. I had moved the unit under another TV and on powering up from the plug I could hear the drive spinning up and down continuously, but each spin up was for longer and longer. Eventually it attained full speed however the box would not power on, but a quick power cycle at the wall for half a second and it came back to life.

On changing the bits in the relkit it all came back to normal again. One warning though if you do decide to change the parts, the two largest capacitors in the relkit are larger and will touch the lid, so try and make alternate arrangements (or insulate them from it!).

Same problem with mine - the two largest ones had to be laid as flat as possible as they were about 10mm higher than the lid. This meant some of the other replaced ones had to be leant over to make space for that to happen. The bottom line is to not trim their legs until you've tried putting the board in situ in the DHD4000 and seeing if anything fouls with the lid - if you trim them before this and you've mounted the capacitors flush to the board then you've lost any wriggle room for adjusting their position.

I've got photos but there doesn't appear to be a way to upload them into this post.

Just checked for relkit 33e - with 15%VAT , p&p etc cost comes to about £14.50

- pics (apart from leadout) look same as my psu.

Wondering now if it is worthwhile to fit in view of cost but a bit pricey to "chance" as I'm not altogether sure if it will fix my problem . My PVR shows constant flashing orange led which I suspect indicates a psu fault - anyone met this please -and is it likely the relkit will sort it?

Thanks!

I think that's what I got when I fitted a hard drive that drew too much power for the internal PSU to handle, so it could well be indicative of a PSU problem.

[I fixed my problem by powering the new drive from an external PSU, and the machine is now ultra-stable!]

A hard disk failure would have the same symptom and it is easier to get the disk into a PC (or attached via USB to IDE adapter) and check that to see it is ok.

Thanks for the postings chaps - it is not looking good!
I've a feeling it is not hard disk failure - when I disconnect the 4 pin power and ide leads and then restore mains the blinking light keeps blinking!
But I could be wrong and I will disassemble my pc in a day or two when I should get the time and I'll test HDD then.
In meantime psu or mainboard remains suspect. Are there schematics with test voltages and/or troubleshooting charts anywhere please?
And just in case does anyone know where to get a replacement power unit and roughly the cost? I am starting to fear that repair may not be economic even though I can wield a soldering iron and solder sucker!
Thanks for all the input!

Well doing that qualifies as complete hard disk failure and is guaranteed to get you the orange blinking light

Well, it would do that; a non-existent drive may well look like one that is faulty...

You course of action depends rather on what you have lying around. Try a spare drive if you have one, provided its power requirements are similar to the installed one (check both 5v and 12v specs). You'll want to delete any partitions before installing. If that doesn't work, the PSU is next in the firing line.

Incidentally, a gizmo that lets you power an IDE or SATA drive and access it via a USB port is of tremendous use here, since it avoids the need to dismantle your PC. It also gives you an external PSU that you can use to power the Thomson hard drive in-situ, for further diagnosis (or to use a drive whose power requirements lie outside the Thomson limits).

Of course, if you don't have these things lying around, you may consider it's not worth the expense and effort.