[cigar95]

At 11:59 last night, my HR23 converted itself from a DVR into a paperweight. No lights, no sound, nothing. Seems pretty likely a case of a power supply dying. (Happy birthday!)

When I call for service, they will presumably offer to replace it, at which point a couple hundred hours of movies, TV shows, and football games on external drives become relics from the past never to be seen again.

Given the likely simplicity of the repair, I'm wondering if anyone has ever known of DTV repairing a DVR and returning it to the customer.

Thanks for any input here.

ETA - The DTV CSR is sending me out a replacement power cord. (See below.) That raises the question - is there any reason for me not to get a cord at the local electronics store rather than wait until Tuesday or Wednesday? Or is there something special and mystically magic about the cords that come with the DVRs? Thanks.

 

[Davenlr]

I have never heard of anyone having that done. I would suggest taking it to a local electronics repair shop. Personally, I offload anything I want to keep permanently onto my server computer.

 

[joed32]

Weaknees might do it for you but they can be pricey. Google them and check. They do repair DVRs.

 

[cigar95]

Customer service is sending me out a replacement power cord. If she can be believed, more often than not the symptoms I described are due to a faulty cord.

Sounds odd, but what do I know? If she's right, I'll still have my football games.

Naturally, I mentioned not wanting to lose recordings if possible, and she replied that the official company policy is that DVRs are not intended for long-term storage. (It was said almost with a wink, knowing that the company has to say that to keep the content-providers satisfied.) She also said in part that's why they don't return individual units to the customer.

I try to save off stuff to DVD, but the editing process takes a while, and I'm pretty far behind now. (Haven't even done last November's Breeders Cup yet.)

 

[trh]

Do you have another DVR that you can swap cords with? Unless you move that cord around aloy, I find it hard to believe that the cord is the reason.


You did check to make sure the current cord is fully plugged in and that your wall outlet still has power?

 

[cigar95]

Checked the power connection, and so on - everything else on that circuit is fine. (No other DVR to check with.)

I do pull out the power cord each time I reboot to switch external drives (after doing a standard shutdown), so it's conceivable that it could be worn. Just seems odd that it died at a time when it wasn't being manipulated or even touched.

 

[billsharpe]

I've been a member of this forum for over five years. One thing I learned early on was not to rely on either the DVR or an attached hard drive for storing programs long-term.

I had a defective OTA tuner on my first HR20-700 and had to replace it after about three months.

 

[The Merg]

I highly doubt the issue is the power cord. Most likely, with how you describe it, the power supply itself is dead.

- Merg

 

[Rich]

I highly doubt the issue is the power cord. Most likely, with how you describe it, the power supply itself is dead.

- Merg

Got any idea where a new power supply can be bought? I've searched and searched and I can't find any, except for one on eBay and that's not the one I'm looking for.

Rich

 

[Rich]

At 11:59 last night, my HR23 converted itself from a DVR into a paperweight. No lights, no sound, nothing. Seems pretty likely a case of a power supply dying. (Happy birthday!)

When I call for service, they will presumably offer to replace it, at which point a couple hundred hours of movies, TV shows, and football games on external drives become relics from the past never to be seen again.

Given the likely simplicity of the repair, I'm wondering if anyone has ever known of DTV repairing a DVR and returning it to the customer.

Thanks for any input here.

ETA - The DTV CSR is sending me out a replacement power cord. (See below.) That raises the question - is there any reason for me not to get a cord at the local electronics store rather than wait until Tuesday or Wednesday? Or is there something special and mystically magic about the cords that come with the DVRs? Thanks.

You don't have a voltmeter? If you do, just plug the cord in and stick the probes in the female end. You should, hell, you will read ~ 120VAC. She was just pacifying you. Sounds like a dead power supply to me. Or, it might be as simple as the fuse being blown. You should be able to see the fuse near the power port. Gotta pop the top to see it.

Rich

 

[Doug Brott]

You'll likely need to get the DVR replaced. No point in waiting for a new power cord to find that out.

 

[wallfishman]

That cord for the HR23 is pretty common for electronics. If you look around your electronics in your house currently I guarantee you have one already in your house that you could unplug to test out. example i have a small tv thats uses that same cord, the charger for my meter, an all in one stereo, I bet i have 5 or 6 of them in different things around here. I too doubt its just the cord, but who knows .......

 

[cigar95]

That cord for the HR23 is pretty common for electronics. If you look around your electronics in your house currently I guarantee you have one already in your house that you could unplug to test out. example i have a small tv thats uses that same cord, the charger for my meter, an all in one stereo, I bet i have 5 or 6 of them in different things around here. I too doubt its just the cord, but who knows .......

That's the data I needed - and, turns out the "bad" cord seems to work just fine for charging my camcorder. A bad sign.

So, looks like I have probably seen USC-Oregon 2011 and the season finale of Hawaii-5-0 for the last time. And looks like my wife will never get to see the last two hours of last night's opening ceremony. (If this is the worst thing that happens to me, my life has been far too easy.)

 

[trh]

Just did a search for a repeat of the opening ceremonies. On multiple times on 103, the 3D channel. Maybe it will be online?

 

[TomCat]

...She was just pacifying you...

There might be more to the story. The odds of a power cord going bad are about 20 million to one, give or take, so odds are about 50/50 they may have actually had one customer who experienced this.

The problem here is how a power cord goes bad. It either opens up, or shorts. Neither is likely, but a shorted power cord can cause a fire, loss of life, etc., so it becomes a liability.

If you call and say you have no power to the unit, there is a chance, however small, that the cord has worn or has been chewed on by a puppy, or whatever. But that cord is then a looming potential lawsuit should you have a fire and tech support did not think to replace it.

So maybe this is simply a policy that covers their butts when a customer reports this.

 

[Rich]

There might be more to the story. The odds of a power cord going bad are about 20 million to one, give or take, so odds are about 50/50 they may have actually had one customer who experienced this.

The problem here is how a power cord goes bad. It either opens up, or shorts. Neither is likely, but a shorted power cord can cause a fire, loss of life, etc., so it becomes a liability.

If you call and say you have no power to the unit, there is a chance, however small, that the cord has worn or has been chewed on by a puppy, or whatever. But that cord is then a looming potential lawsuit should you have a fire and tech support did not think to replace it.

So maybe this is simply a policy that covers their butts when a customer reports this.

Or, maybe he was being pacified.

Rich

 

[cigar95]

Or, maybe he was being pacified.

Rich

I certainly hope she wouldn't do that intentionally, because it wouldn't be any benefit towards actually solving my problem.

In any case, a new unit will be headed my way tomorrow after a second call to Customer Service. I just hope it isn't so old that it's incompatible with my external drives. (My impression is that the 23 was quite a bit less fussy than were its predecessors.)

 

[dpeters11]

Can't think of a reason, they added 4k support but that was in software throughout the models. But, it is considered an unsupported so certainly possible.

 

[Shades228]

The only time to order a power cord is if it's lost, missing, or damaged visibly. The power cords are standard 2 prong so if you have another device that has one you could test it.

 

[cigar95]

OK, after my experiments, we're all in agreement that the (generic) power cord is not the issue. (At the time of my original question, I didn't know if the units had something special in their power cords that required replacement from DTV.)

But now I wonder if the power supply may not be the whole issue either. If I look in through the grate, I can see that about once per second, the fan makes a small pulse, like it's trying to turn. This stops when I unplug the cord.

So the unit is getting *some* power. The PS may indeed be fatally wounded, but it isn't dead. (For those of you who were fans of '24', this may bring to memory the famous line "You're either dead, or you're not dead. there's no such thing as 'sorta dead'."

But one thing remains true - it seems extremely unlikely that I'm ever going to watch anything recorded on this unit again.