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batteryman – 53 minutes ago »
I’ve opened a few Humax boxes, freeview and freesat. Older units tended to use Western Digital Green drives. My HDR2000T had a Western Digital Blue video drive (1TB) and I replaced it with a Seagate Pipeline 2TB drive from a SKY box which seems to be working well. I also opened a (looked like) newish PVR9300T last week which had a Seagate Pipeline 500GB drive.
I don’t think PVR useage is particularly demanding of hard drive performance, more important is reliability and noise. I don’t actually know what you mean by a top spec. drive unless you mean a super fast one suited to high speed gaming or other demanding application. I think it’s more a case of a disk drive being suitable for PVR application and data retrieval speed above a certain point is not critical; it may become critical if any 4k PVRs come to market if the broadcasters start transmitting in 4k.
I stand corrected if a hard drive expert disagrees but that’s my understanding of the issue at the moment.
I agree.
I have a 10yr old Foxsat-HDR that has a WD AV-GP 1TB drive in it. It’s still used every day.
PVR’s use low power low speed drives designed for 24/7 operation. An AV drive even though low speed has a data transfer that can easily support up to 10 HD streams at once nore than fast enough for the pvrs we currently have.
Newer unit’s tend to use Seagate pipeline AV drives. It’s very simple to change hard drives which because of the moving parts is likely to be the first component to fail. My much used HDR-1000S is on it’s second 2TB Seagate drive.
I have a 5000T with a Seagate Pipeline 2TB drive. It has no problem recording up to 4 HD channels at once and replaying a recording or watching a 5th subject to Mux.
All the drives removed from units removed from units with this fault are found to be OK. The issue is somewhere in the Sata hard drive controller circuitry.
Although in theory 4K would have 4 times the data requirement of full-HD the increase in efficiency of the H265 Video compression codec used for 4K more than compensates when compared to H264/AVC as used for current HD broadcasting.
That means a low speed current technology drive should still be able to support up to 10 4K channels.
Look at the download speeds you need to use 4K streaming sources, it’s way below the speed a AV drive can currently handle.
The problem here is not HDD related.
johnway – 5 hours ago »
Martin Liddle – 1 minute ago »
johnway – 21 minutes ago »
I don’t expect the original HDD is top spec.
What makes you say that?
Mass production and the sheer number of reported issues with PVR HDDs by disgruntled owners on the web.
Inherently a complicated device with rotating components operating to very fine tolerances is going to be less reliable than electronic circuit boards; that is just a fact of life. Hence a large proportion of reported hardware problems will be hard drive related. I do think some of the Seagate drive models used in the earlier Humax PVRs were less reliable than the manufacturers specifications indicated but the ones used in current models appear to me to be reasonably reliable. Seagate quote an expected annualised failure rate of 0.55% and an expected average lifetime of about 100,000 power on hours.
100,000 hours ? Power on for 10 hours a day (mine may be on for 5 at most) would be 10,000 days which is approx 27 years !! I think a zero has been mis-quoted here.
johnway – 24 minutes ago »
100,000 hours ? Power on for 10 hours a day (mine may be on for 5 at most) would be 10,000 days which is approx 27 years !! I think a zero has been mis-quoted here.
Not so.
To explain:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/174791en/
Those who use the remote record function will greatly exceed “250 average motor start/stop cycles per year” by 100 times (less the period of the day the unit is not in standby)
Good knowledge to be learned here but : now my head is starting to spin as fast as the HDD !! 😯 😯 😯
Well let’s hope it is an AV one at 5600 RPM not one of the super duper data ones at 7200RPM.
Does anybody know which resistor
I have just spoken with Humax technical support. It’s clear that they are not technical and struggle with support.
I asked for a schematic diagram to allow us to repair the dreaded no HDD fault ourselves to which they replied that they didn’t know if a schematic was available because it’s an old unit. Fob off answer.
I asked that they tell me who could tell me if a schematic was available. He took my email address and said he would come back to me after he’d made some enquiries. He was very aggravated by my challenging him.
I was clear that I think Humax have an obligation to help customers if they are aware of a common failing part and that if the response is that they cannot help then I would reach out to the Humax president and Technical Manager.
I don’t accept that there is no schematic and that they cannot help us to identify the failing components.
It’s clear that their only focus is selling more units and not repairing old ones, despite the fact that they are no longer making freesat receivers.
There is some legislation that says if the same component has failed across multiple units, and it is proven that the failure of that component was down to a design issue, then the manufacturer must make help to resolve the issue
Let’s wait and see.
fm49218 – 5 mins ago »
I have just spoken with Humax technical support. It’s clear that they are not technical and struggle with support.
I asked for a schematic diagram to allow us to repair the dreaded no HDD fault ourselves to which they replied that they didn’t know if a schematic was available because it’s an old unit. Fob off answer.
I asked that they tell me who could tell me if a schematic was available. He took my email address and said he would come back to me after he’d made some enquiries. He was very aggravated by my challenging him.
I was clear that I think Humax have an obligation to help customers if they are aware of a common failing part and that if the response is that they cannot help then I would reach out to the Humax president and Technical Manager.
I don’t accept that there is no schematic and that they cannot help us to identify the failing components.
It’s clear that their only focus is selling more units and not repairing old ones, despite the fact that they are no longer making freesat receivers.
There is some legislation that says if the same component has failed across multiple units, and it is proven that the failure of that component was down to a design issue, then the manufacturer must make help to resolve the issue
Let’s wait and see.
One company offers fixed price repairs for all Humax boxes
grahamlthompson – 4 mins ago »
fm49218 – 5 mins ago »
I have just spoken with Humax technical support. It’s clear that they are not technical and struggle with support.
I asked for a schematic diagram to allow us to repair the dreaded no HDD fault ourselves to which they replied that they didn’t know if a schematic was available because it’s an old unit. Fob off answer.
I asked that they tell me who could tell me if a schematic was available. He took my email address and said he would come back to me after he’d made some enquiries. He was very aggravated by my challenging him.
I was clear that I think Humax have an obligation to help customers if they are aware of a common failing part and that if the response is that they cannot help then I would reach out to the Humax president and Technical Manager.
I don’t accept that there is no schematic and that they cannot help us to identify the failing components.
It’s clear that their only focus is selling more units and not repairing old ones, despite the fact that they are no longer making freesat receivers.
There is some legislation that says if the same component has failed across multiple units, and it is proven that the failure of that component was down to a design issue, then the manufacturer must make help to resolve the issue
Let’s wait and see.
One company offers fixed price repairs for all Humax boxes
I have seen that, and wondered what heir affiliation to Humax is. I don’t understand why Humax wouldn’t help its consumers. Manuals are available, as i used to repair Sat receivers many moons ago.
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