One of our two DHD4000s is acting oddly; the eldest of the two, bought in February 2005.

When brought out of standby, it appears to fire up okay but then refuses to accept remote control commands - effectively freezing. Pulling the plug reboots it fine, but I noticed that the EPG only had five days left.

I have rescanned and 88 channels are recognised (noticing that the "Durris" transmitter grouping changed to "Highlands & Islands"); checked signal strength and quality (okay); deleted existing EPG file (new version never downloaded over the past three days).

All channels are being picked up fine on that multiplex.

The Engineering Log has only a one page statement per day, along the lines of "_InitDownloadSchedule: System time is 04:07 on 18.12.2008 : OAD pragram time set to 03.00 on 19.12.2008".

Do you think the power supply capacitors are on the way out?

Can't comment about the PSU, but it might be worth rebooting the DHD4000 without the aerial connected.

This was always a good option for recovering from the YLD, and I guess it forces the device to do some sort of fundamental cleanup.

Only one word of warning. I have had to do this about 3 times in the last month, twice because my darling 2 year old son found it amusing to flick the power switch on and off quickly, resulting in a stuck yellow light, and the other time because I plugged in a laptop to the custom USB port that I've added and got some errors meaning I got a stuck YLD too. When the device came back to life in two of these occasions all of the history had been deleted. I can't say for sure whether it was the rebooting without the aerial that caused the loss, or whether something more fundamental had failed anyway, so the loss had occurred before then, but I thought I had better sound a warning bell!

Note that in the last year, apart from those two occasions, I have rebooted the unit without the aerial connected with no adverse consequences.

HTH!

Matt

The usual cause of it ignoring the remote is that you need to press the STB button on the top left of the remote control first

Well, the latest update is that I deliberately left the DHD4000 switched on last night, before going to bed. The usual red standby light was there this morning.

Tried to start it up this evening: it froze on one channel and would not accept remote commands OR front panel input.

Tried to unplug and reboot several times, allowing a decent amont of time between each reboot: it just showed a yellow light.

Left the machine unplugged for a considerable amount of time (4 hours); plugged it back in and it will not kick itself into life. It merely clicks once every second. There is no fan activity at all now, and the "Yellow Light of Death" remains.

I tried unplugging the aerial and rebooting: no effect.
The remote works perfectly on the other machine.

This faulty DHD4000 always seemed to run hotter than the other one. Whilst the engineering menu reported similar temperatures to the OK machine, this faulty one always felt substantially hotter in the area of the power supply.

I think it has finally cooked its goose.

My DHD4000 had pretty much the same symptoms as trilobite's original post :-
(1) Remaining days of EPG were counting down because the overnight updates were failing. (I was worried the EPG data had stopped being broadcast!).
(2) Before first use each day, had to power cycle box to get it to respond to remote.
(3) After power cycling, hard disk sometimes failed to spin up. (Thought I might have a dead hard disk).
(4) Log file complained "couldn't tune to service". (Leaving box on at night, as opposed to in standby, log looked like EPG had downloaded okay - but it hadne't).

Deleting all recodings didn't solve the problem.
Re-formating hard disk didn't solve the problem.
Deleting all EPG data didn't solve the problem.

Replacing the power supply capacitors has solved the problem.

I used Satcure's RELKIT33e http://www.satcure.com/gds200.htm; with a twist. As Satcure point out in their (good!) instructions, two of the supplied capacitors are too tall (40mm) for the DHD4000's case, and thus need to be fitted "bent over" on long leads.

Didn't fancy this (professional pride of an electronics engineer), so after much research I used a pair of of Rubycon ZLH series 1500uF, 35V instead. These are the same diameter as the Satcure ones (12.5mm), but only 30mm tall so can be fitted upright.

Got mine from Farnell (£1.57+VAT each, but minimum order value of £20) : http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/pro...sp?SKU=8126682.

Spec's wise, the ZLH's are :-
Load Life = 10000 hours at 105 degrees C
Maximum ripple current = 3450mA.
If I've correctly indentified the (high quality) caps Satcure supply, the ZLH's are even better .

For those interested, here's a link on the "Reliability of Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors" : http://www.elna-america.com/tech_al_reliability.php. The caps in the DHD4000's PSU are "designed" to wear out .

Hope this helps someone keep their DHD4000 living.

Jon

High - I am having the same problem and haven't had the full 14day EPG since Christmas. As per this thread and the one I raised the answer given is to replace the capacitors. Which incidentally the ones I have ordered arrived today.

regards Steve

Trilobite,

I have replaced the capacitors using the satcure pack and my box appears to be functioning again (viewing/recording ok) - but as per my thread I can't get the lid on so if you fancy avoiding this issue it may be worth following texarkana's advice and find some alternatives for the larger capacitors.
Note: if your box goes like mine then you have nothing to lose as by the middle of this week even powering up again wouldn't get it working again.

regards Steve

The faulty DHD4000 had fallen into disuse anyway; my partner decided to install Sky+ back in September.

However, my machine still works; although I nearly had heart failure last night when I rescanned for channels. The bloomin' thing froze just before the "press green to continue" end of the scan, and the ring of blue leds had three lit at the top left and two lit at the bottom right!

Pulling the plug and counting to thirty cured it; but boy, it doesn't half give you some fright!