Sony RDR-HXD970 stuck in 'Update' (again!)

[No_Pic]

Hi

Has anyone else got this well-known issue with the older RDR-HX#### hard disk recorders this morning? Mine got stuck during the EPG update on Sun night/Mon a.m (from London Crystal Palace transmitter).

Last issue was around May 2014 which caused national problems for Sony hard disk owners. Caused previously by a faulty EPG update and wasn't resolved until the faulty EPG was corrected.

Anyone else got this again today or has my much-loved recorder finally bitten the dust?

Cheers

[No_Pic]

Sorry to say that I have come down this morning to find my Sony is stuck on 'Update' once more so all of the above may just be temporary fixes! Back to square one for me!

[Mooly01]

You mentioned the 'Skip' function earlier. My past experience of this is that it only removes the channel from the users view but does not inhibit reception of it, something I suspected along time ago when I started getting problems with timer recordings starting at wrong times.

If you know what the problem channel is (the actual channel number carrying the multiplex) then I would first suggest having a look at the signal strength of  these and comparing to the wanted channels.

If you go into system menu and select 'digital tuner' there is a signal strength option. Accessing that will take you to the channel currently received (between CH21 and CH69). Use the < and > buttons of the central selector on the remote to look at all channels from 21 to 69 and note signal strengths and quality. Quality is the important one. Strength could be anywhere from 50% or less to 100%.

Look for the problem channel and see if they are significantly weaker. If they are then a simple in-line aerial attenuator may get you out of trouble. You could need anywhere from 3db to 18db depending on your main signal strength. Attenuators are 'stackable' and so two 3db's in series will give 6db and so on.

If you still can't eliminate the problem channel without affecting the wanted ones then there is another cheap option you can try if you are handy at fitting F connectors to aerial leads which is to make something called a 'stub'. This is a simple T connector inserted in-line with the aerial feed. The spur is connected to open ended piece of coax cable that is accurately trimmed to an exact length to match the channel number needed to be eliminated. Accurately means start a little longer than needed and trim down.

I have done this for problems in the Granada region (Winter Hill transmitter) where transmissions from North Wales (Moel-Y-Parc) intrude.   

This explains how its done and there is an on-line calculator on the same page.

http://www.arcticpeak.com/antennapages/quaterwavestub.htm

This shows frequencies. Use the 'centre' value.

Frequencies

[No_Pic]

Thanks for the tuning info. Interesting stuff. My idea of remote channels possibly causing problems may be irrelevant as, from a bit more reading this afternoon, it seems as if the EPG is carried per multiplex rather than per programme channel.

I have all the correct channels I am supposed to have after the 21 March 2018 retune. The signal quality is 100% across all channels. Signal strength is >84% across all channels with the exception of RF channel 35 which carries the local mux from Crystal Palace (and some obscure TV channels I’d be unlikely to want to watch).

I shall probably just wait now and see if this problem persists. May also try to contact Freeview or Digital UK to see if they have any info. They were quite helpful during the digital switchover some time back.

Thanks for the help and advice

Cheers

[Mooly01]

You're very welcome, and let us know how you get on

A clue (for me at least) was seeing the unwanted channels populate the 800's in the programme guide with regional variations for BBC (Wales) showing up. Even though I would set the timer to record say BBC 1 (Countryfile for example) it would sometimes record the wrong channel (one of the 800's) at a different time to the main BBC 1 offering.

There do seem to be a lot of unknowns in what channels and MUXES carry exactly what information.

Good luck. 

[galpat]

Hi Mooly01 and No_Pic,

Thanks for the advice.  I too am in Hertfordshire.  Didn't quite know how to take your reference to waiting until the unit begins to switch off, as it never would switch on!  But I kept poking buttons and unplugging the aerial and unplugging the power, and eventually it unlocked itself and I was able to go thru setup and acquiring channels.  Don't know why, but it SEEMS okay for the moment.   Don't know anything about what channels or wrong channels; just keeping my fingers crossed!

[No_Pic]

Hi galpat

Glad you managed to regain control of it! I rang the Freeview advice line this morning. They gave the general advice about retuning but then that was about it! Nothing more useful from them.

It is actually Digital UK who manage the EPG so that will be my next port of call. Interesting that you, myself and my friend are all in Herts.

If you now leave your unit in its normal standby mode (powered off with the remote so you can still see the clock display on the front) then the next EPG broadcast will be at 14:00.

If you are lucky, you may have cleared the fault. If not it will be stuck in Update again. To clarify on the 'escape' process, if it does get stuck again on Update at 14:00 .....

The normal update lasts 5 to 8 minutes, so if it is still going by (say) 14:15 you are probably stuck!

When it is stuck on 'Update' on the front display, hold down the power button and keep holding it until the unit goes off into normal standby (clock on the front shows), then immediately give the power button a couple of quick clicks to switch the unit on normally before it boots back into update again. It should start up normally and you should be able to access menus or wait 20 seconds or so until it has properly started and then use the power button to put it back into standby.

If I get anything useful from Digital UK I will post again.

Cheers

[No_Pic]

After much trial and error, finally got a fix for this which was to turn off the over-the-air software update feature on the Sony recorder.

System Menu (button on remote)>>Initial setup>>Options (scroll down)>>Software update (bottom of the list). Page 150 in the manual. Set the software Auto Update to ‘Off’

The update still runs at the normal times but the duration has been reduced from what was 5 to 8 min down to about 3 min. EPG still seems to be OK and no getting stuck in the update loop.

No idea why this suddenly happened but may possibly be linked to the forthcoming shutdown of the engineering channel for older equipment. http://dtg.org.uk/dtg/download_schedule.html

Fingers crossed nothing else breaks it!

[Mooly01]

I'd forgotten that option even existed tbh

Just tried turning it off for curiosity to see if it affected EPG update. I'm pretty sure the 10:00 and 14:00 'Update' usually runs for exactly 15 minutes on my HXD870. Had a quick peek at around 8 minutes past two and it was showing 'Update' as normal.

I'll leave it and see what happens regarding the EPG.