My DTR-T1010 just stopped working.
istacey
Member Posts: 9
My DTR-T1010 stopped working! Yesterday, fine. Today not fine.
After boot screens, blank screen. Can see the channel selection on the box and move up/down.
Can't get any TV, nothing on the remote works. Have left it for ages to see if its busy, nothing.
Can't do a factory reset (unless someone can advise how??) because the only instructions that I can find online relate to a really old box.
Help appreciated.
Ian
After boot screens, blank screen. Can see the channel selection on the box and move up/down.
Can't get any TV, nothing on the remote works. Have left it for ages to see if its busy, nothing.
Can't do a factory reset (unless someone can advise how??) because the only instructions that I can find online relate to a really old box.
Help appreciated.
Ian
0
Comments
As Steve suggests, try using a SCART lead to ensure the video is being output. If this shows no problems after booting up, try another HDMI lead and use another HDMI input for your TV, if one is available.
Must try simple solutions first next time.
In other news, I was speaking to Amazon about potentially returning the box. They offered me a replacement or refund. I was tempted to take the refund of £250 and buy a new (double capacity box) for half the price.
Before delving into the arcane mysteries of HDMI handshaking, it seems as well to check that the hands are actually in contact with one another :-)
Glad to hear this was resolved
Just on a quick side note, we have updated the instructions our FAQ How do I perform a Maintenance Mode recovery? to reflect all YouView boxes now. Hopefully you will not have to use this FAQ in the future but at least you know just in case.
ITYM Power button on the front of the box?
Actual MM Option 3: 'delete', not 'deleted'
Excellent progress in having this updated though - I do not mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, only to help you get it perfect :-)
*EDIT (04/09/14 - 11.56am)*: The instructions to enter the Maintenance Mode Menu for the DTR-T1000 are correct, you can enter this menu while the standby light is red, but only after just having turned it on from the back. The instructions are slightly different however for the DTR-T1010 which I will update now.
My comment related to 'Power button on the top of the box'. There's nothing there, just a blank expanse of metal and/or plastic. The Power button is on the front of the box, on the DTR-T1000. And likewise, I believe, on the DTR-T1010.
Cheers
Roy
On contacting Humax , they just sent the instructions that I had already found online. They advised that they do not provide a USB based firmware update, which I find strange as this is one of the options within the factory reset settings. To make matters worse, I pulled out an old DVR (non youview model) that had not been turned on since 2008, still working without problems !! Is there any other way to reset this device?
Thanks Phil
Sorry to hear of your problems.
Can you please give the exact error message you get when you try a factory reset (try it again if you are not sure)?
Jamie
https://community.youview.com/youview...
will lead you to the instructions on how to do a Maintenance Mode recovery, yet still keep your recordings (if not much else).
You don't say which box you have, but they are all covered there.
One possible cause for stopping at 'Nearly Ready' is that the disc isn't spinning, something you might want to listen for.
This can be due to the disc sticking, in which case a sharp tap with the heel of your hand may free it, or to power problems inside the box; the capacitors on the T10x0 models are notorious for going out of spec, apparently.
https://community.youview.com/youview/topics/it-is-easy-to-replace-a-failed-hard-drive-in-the-youvie...
Thanks to SteveOC.
Is 'Sticky Disk Syndrome' the cause of the problem, or is it a symptom?
Modern HDDs are very reliable, yet they seem to fail in disproportionate numbers in the T1000 series boxes. Couldn't there be an underlying cause?
I thought that the sticking HDD head problem was a possible outcome if the power to the disk was lost for some reason when it is operating. This would seem to be an unlikely occurrence for a disk in a PVR, unless it was switched off at the mains while it was working.
I think it's the spindles that stick.
Or maybe, as you describe, a faulty power supply means there is no longer enough welly to run the disc up - the time when it needs to draw the most power - though whether this will go a stage further and destroy the disc circuitry depends on how good the over voltage protection, etc., in the power supply is.
Re my analogy, if you are 'thirsty' (to watch your YouView box) and you can't because the disc won't spin, it scarce matters if it is faulty disc (Perrier) or faulty power supply (Evian), the thing isn't running.
It matters, of course, to the diagnosis and fix, but we would need to able to determine the difference between power supplies that fail and make the disc fail, power supplies that fail meaning a perfectly healthy disc cannot run, discs that fail even though the power supply is perfectly OK, and so on,
My impression, from the anecdotal evidence on here, is that we have no reports where both disc and power supply are failed, it largely being one or the other, but perhaps you can find a cascade failure or two, and give citations?
I never thought of it as sticking heads.
Try a search on 'Sticking hard drive'. It seems that the heads can stick to the platter and prevent the drive from spinning up. Unless nothing on the internet is true, of course.
OK, got your analogy. Thanks, but my main point was about cause and effect.:-)
People aren’t going to report failed or failing PSUs, in in the same way that they don’t report failed HDDs. They report problems with their boxes - won’t wake up from standby, stuck on Nearly Ready, won't record, lost tuning, etc. You and others consider the symptoms, offer possible reasons for the problem described and try to give a possible solution. Sometimes the solution cures the problem, at least for a while, and sometimes it doesn’t. Often the problem is diagnosed as terminal and the box is designated as ‘beyond its useful life’. The owner then gets another from BT or some other source, or abandons YouView and goes elsewhere.
The number of reports of failed T1000 series boxes is significant, which leads me to the thought that there must be an underlying issue with these boxes that causes them to be unreliable. In particular, the number of replacement ’refurb’ boxes that fail within a day or two of being installed is interesting. It is my guess that the returned boxes are simply checked for electrical safety and maybe the HDD replaced, before sending them out again as OK. The box then fails again because the original cause of failure has not been rectified.
Modern HDDs are very reliable, yet they seem to fail in T1000 series boxes with alarming regularity. The sticking HDD and other issues would seem to be exacerbated by excessive heat, but why are they overheating? Failed fan? Why are the fans failing prematurely? Some brands of capacitor are known to be unreliable. In a recent post SteveOC, who is undertaking the task of replacing the capacitors in his YouView box, reported that the original caps in his box were branded SamYoung. My guess is that if his box has this brand of capacitor installed, then many of them have. SamYoung capacitors have a very poor reputation for reliability. They have been held responsible for causing problems with some Samsung TVs. Try a search on ‘SamYoung bad caps’. They were the brand of capacitor that were installed in many Topfield PVRs, where they have been identified as the cause of many problems, some of which are similar to the ones experienced by the owners of Humax DTR T1000 series boxes.
I think that there is sufficient evidence to at least suggest that many of the problems that people experience with T1000 series YouView boxes is attributable to the premature deterioration of the capacitors in their PSUs.
But PSUs generate heat, and electrical noise, and place a voltage hazard inside the boxes, so those are three other good reasons for using external power bricks.
Size might be a fourth; while I note in passing that none of the above seem to worry Apple, whose compact AppleTV boxes take the mains directly, I also note that I have a dead one which I must let my local Apple Store have a look at....
But yes, if your power supply is out of spec, then nothing in the box can be relied upon, not the hard drive, not the RAM, not anything.
YouView though, do tell us that the reliability of T1000s is in line with industry standards, and posters here also remind us that as we only get people on who have issues, our experience is skewed away from the true picture of the millions of users who never have a moment's trouble.
But if T1000s really are in line, then the subsequent boxes must represent an absolutely spectacular achievement in the reliability stakes.
Tempting though it is to ascribe all sorts of YouView box woes to bad capacitors though, we do indeed try to treat all problems, at least initially, as software ones. Not least because you might think there would be some commonality from hardware problems, with a small set of classic symptoms, and that does not seem to be the case.
Though AAMOI, what did you find on the Topfields? A set, or a very few sets, of symptoms where you would all nod sagely and go 'capacitors'? Or a wide range of bizarre, but different, behaviours that would make you say the same?
And with a box that had symptoms, would they stay the same (as software issues tend to) or change (as progressive hardware failures would)?
Anyway, I chased some of those Google suggestions you gave, with mixed results, and they seemed to suggest that a drive with sticking heads buzzes, or clicks, and if got going again, should be replaced ASAP.
I don't think anyone who has reported a box stuck at 'Nearly Ready', which we might ascribe to the HDD, has reported any such noises? Nor anyone who has reported success with percussive maintenance, only to return relatively shortly and describe it as merely a temporary measure ?
External power bricks only supply one voltage though, so there must be further power manipulation going on inside the box. I don't think that every component inside the box would be happy with 12V dc.
I understand that our experience of problems with YouView boxes is skewed, but even taking that into account, the pile of failed T1000 series boxes does seem to be rather large.
Wikibooks has a page on Topfield 5800 PVRs:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Topfield_5800
The section on 'A guide to repairing the PSU' says that the range of symptoms that can indicate a failing PSU are many and varied, but it lists the following three as possible symptoms:
- Hard drive clicking / not spinning up (although a drive failure will cause similar problems)
- Re-booting / locking up / not starting
- (Extremely) sluggish response to the remote
They do sound a bit familiar!I appreciate your point about drives with sticking heads buzzing and clicking, and it could well be that some T1000 HDDs fail to spin up because of a sticking spindle, but it is possible that this happens because of excessive heat.
I am aware that you have often prescribed 'percussive maintenance' on the HDD as a possible remedy for the 'stuck at nearly ready' problem, but I am unconvinced at the efficacy of the procedure.:-)
As an aside Roy, I think that you do a brilliant job of responding to forum members' problems with their YouView boxes, giving lots of sensible advice. I don't know where you get the time and the patience from. Keep up the good work.