HXD870 not showing digital channels

[rassilon]

I've got two HXD870 recorders, one upstairs and one in the living room. Had them for a few years with no trouble.

They were working fine this morning (19th July 2013) and then this afternoon whilst watching a DVD on the living room player, the screen went black but the sound carried on. I stopped the playback and then resumed it and it seemed ok.

This evening I tried to watch tv though it and all channels are black. The EPG guide will flash up for a second or two and then the screen will go black. It looks like some update has broken the recorders. The EPG shows several different colours (green etc and graphics) whereas it was mostly blue and while previously.

The upstairs recorder has the same problems. They are on different ariels. They both will playback recorded programs ok or DVDs. It tired doing a rescan and it found all the usual channels ok. The firmware was 1.65. I've updated it to 1.70 and did Easy Setup again including another channel scan but that hasn't fixed the problem,

I think its a software update problem because both recorders have stopped working at the same time.

[rassilon]

This morning both my recorders have UPDATE displayed on their front panels. They seem to be stuck as they've been in this state for a while now and I can't even switch the recorders on.

Looks like our recorders are now well and truly broken grrrr!

[rassilon]

I've emailed Sony support via this website too. It might be a good idea if more people did that too so they're aware of the problem affecting lots of us.

[bingbonglong]

Exactly the same for me too.

[cmdady]

Thanks - I have just sent a message to Sony - will wait and see!  Nothing seems to fix the issue, leaving it off for 12 hours, back to factory settings etc.

[baldbalrog]

Yep - our HXD-890 has crashed as well - was thinking if buying a new one to replace it.  We have teo larger recorders - wonder what they are doing.  We woke up to find the 890 showing "UPDATE" on the front panel.  Nothing sorts it and running the update again, it just crashes

[baldbalrog]

The other two are an 870 which we use for analogue CCTV recording, and an 890 which has also crashed - we'll leave the 870 in analogue!!

[rassilon]

For those who have contacted Sony, has anyone had any response back from them?

I sent them an email but had no reply. Not even an acknowledgement of the email (so I hope I typed my email correctly!)

Their telephone support lines are open only Mon-Fri 9-to-5 and it seems they rolled out this major update last thing on a Friday. Great timing!

[Flatbrat]

I have copy/pasted my contact details on my blog

[marksandilands]

I have two HXD970 machines. Both have failed to complete the update process overnight.

I have attempted to email Sony support and the email system is down for maintenance!

As it stands at the moment I have two machines the are dead in the water and do not want to touch them for fear of disrupting them.

Does any one know what to do next, please?

[EFBenson]

I contacted via the 'contact us' area of the website, so shouldn't be any address problems, but haven't had even an auto-acknowledgement.  As you point out support ends at 5pm on Friday, though I was hoping the online enquiries would be monitored and someone would pick up that there is a significant problem.  I wonder if there are any open lines of contact, other than customer support, at weekends?  Sony not endearing themselves to (I guess) a large number of customers here!