Amstrad DRX780 to 1.5Tb WD EVDS

Which replacement drives can you use and which do people recommend?

Re: Amstrad DRX780 to 1.5Tb WD EVDS

Postby njeo » Tue Apr 20, 2010 8:23 pm

These boxes aren't particularly robust with 1.5Tb drives, it would seem.
Since I wiped my drive, I've had only one blue screen (the one I mentioned in my last post). Instead I've had other problems whereby the box will freeze after I try to start playback of a new recording say 2 minutes in - I had selected a recording, slid across to "User Defined" and typed in 2, but when I pressed Select the box froze and wouldn't respond to any keys, although video carried on playing in the Mini TV window. Had to wait for the current recording to finish and then power down.

I've noticed my box getting slower and slower at initiating playback of recordings (the drive is now 77% free), and I reckon if the planner fills up a bit more, it will get so slow that I will trigger blue screens again.

Might have to move down to a 1Tb hard drive, or maybe 750Gb :-(
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Re: Amstrad DRX780 to 1.5Tb WD EVDS

Postby njeo » Tue Apr 20, 2010 8:27 pm

Oh, and when I type in a channel number, like 101, the box will sometimes fail to change channel and then decide not to respond to any keys, although the channel continues to play out underneath the little blue "101" box, which stays on screen indefinitely. That happened before and after my latest format, but never on the stock 320Gb drive. If it's not one thing it's your mother...!
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Re: Amstrad DRX780 to 1.5Tb WD EVDS

Postby dmaidmen » Thu Apr 22, 2010 11:32 am

Gogga5 wrote:Hi,
I have been running my box for a few weeks now and while I haven't had all the issues njeo has had, some are familiar and I have had a few interesting ones of my own. I have had the blue screen last Thursday. The best way I can describe it was like only having one satelite input? Only one of 2 scheduled recording were successful that evening. When a program was recording, I had a blue screen when I changed channel. I powered down and that rectified the problem.


Hi,

I have a been using a DRX780 with a 1TB drive for just under a year. I also get the 1 tuner problem occasionally and rectify it with a reboot. Normally the Sky+ planner rebuild option doesnt work after the 1 tuner issue has occured so its usually a hard reset by pulling out the power cord. The issue normally crops up when two things are scheduled to record. One will fail and then you will only be able to view the channel that is succesfully recording. The others will all be blue.

Planner slowness is an issue but I keep this in check my manually deleting recordings and making sure series link bundles do not have too many epsiodes hidden away. Childrens TV programms seem especially bad for this. It seems to be the number of individual programs rather than the disk space used/free that slows my planner down. After a clearup I rebuild the planner and performance will be improved.

My final issue is artifcats appearing in playback of HD recordings. When i'm watching a recorded HD program the picture will occasional break up for a split second normally near the top of the screen before returning to normal. The break up will appear each time at the same point until I do a planner rebuild. This may then move the artifact to another point of the recording or remove it entirely. Very strange..

I don't think the picture on SD is as good as any of the dodgy thomson's I had before this but its still more reliable.

ATB

Duncan
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Re: Amstrad DRX780 to 1.5Tb WD EVDS

Postby njeo » Thu Apr 22, 2010 7:44 pm

dmaidmen wrote:
Gogga5 wrote:Hi,
I have been running my box for a few weeks now and while I haven't had all the issues njeo has had, some are familiar and I have had a few interesting ones of my own. I have had the blue screen last Thursday. The best way I can describe it was like only having one satelite input? Only one of 2 scheduled recording were successful that evening. When a program was recording, I had a blue screen when I changed channel. I powered down and that rectified the problem.


Hi,

I have a been using a DRX780 with a 1TB drive for just under a year. I also get the 1 tuner problem occasionally and rectify it with a reboot. Normally the Sky+ planner rebuild option doesnt work after the 1 tuner issue has occured so its usually a hard reset by pulling out the power cord. The issue normally crops up when two things are scheduled to record. One will fail and then you will only be able to view the channel that is succesfully recording. The others will all be blue.


Oh dear this is what I have now, how annoying. I'm currently recording a programme on one channel and all the others are blue. I'm watching the recording I'm currently making from the start. I'm expecting the programme I'm recording now to fail, as all the others today have failed or clashed. Both inputs say they are locked with 50% signal strength and quality on each input.
And yes when I get blue screens the planner rebuild doesn't complete so I have to pull the plug.

Thankfully though the issues I've described in earlier posts - having blue screens when playing back any recording on the planner - hasn't resurfaced... although the night is young!
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Re: Amstrad DRX780 to 1.5Tb WD EVDS

Postby markshark » Fri Jun 04, 2010 12:57 pm

What's the latest on this please?
How is your Sky box behaving now?
Thanks in advance.
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Re: Amstrad DRX780 to 1.5Tb WD EVDS

Postby njeo » Sat Jun 05, 2010 7:40 am

To me or another poster?
My box became so unreliable eventually and I had to do a full system reset, but after time the problems came back. I even went back to the stock drive but the box still had some of the same problems even on the stock drive. It would freeze up on channel changes and recordings would start but could not be stopped (the recording would continue past its finish time and then not stop - it would immediately go back to 'recording' after trying to end it manually). Plus I still had the 1 tuner problem described above.

I eventually called Sky to complain about the reliability of the box and it was replaced with a reconditioned Pace, which is so fast and so reliable compared to the Amstrad that I don't want to upgrade its hard drive. If I did I would go for something smaller like 640Gb. The Pace is brilliant in comparison to the Amstrad - the EPG operates so much faster - it takes just 2 seconds to get into Anytime and 1 second to get into the Planner, and paging up/down in the Planner is almost instantaneous. I had one spontaneous reboot on day one and then have had a single recording which froze during playback after 47 minutes (a throw back to the SD Sky+ days?!) last week and blue-screened when trying to resume playback after 47 minutes, but that's been it for problems.
I don't think the Amstrad DRX780s are capable boxes, presumably why they've been replaced with faster boxes.
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