I went to do a program timer recording this evening, but my Panny EZ17 essentially locked up. It powered up OK, but the TV screen was black. I could not change channels initially nor eject the disc because it was spinning. I had to do the 10 second power off mode. I turned back on, opened the disc drawer & closed it again and got the black screen. Front of the machine displayed SP 200. I played around & could select & watch analog channels, but the clear QAM HD ones just gave me a black screen.

I was able to do a channel rescan which corrected the problem. Comcast re-mapped 2 of the channels. It brought 5.2 down to 5.1 (which it normally should have been) and 11.2 down to 11.1 (again where it should have been). Apparently this re-mapping somehow affected all the HD clear QAM channels, and prevented me from ejecting the disc or turning off the power the normal way.

If Comcast did the remapping when I was away & I had scheduled timer recordings I guess they would never get recorded. They did remapping a few months ago also & almost screwed things up for me. Before then, some of my QAM were at the actual channels & some were mapped to the virtual ones. Their remapping moved them all to virtual channels.

I don't know how other DVD recorders handle actual versus virtual channels. But my TV tunes in the actual HD QAM channels. This is how it initially picked them up & I'm keeping it that way. If the Panny recorder worked the same as the TV there would have been no problem.

End of rant.
Mike

The bugs continue.....:D
Seriously thought, if that's the least of your problem with your EZ-17 you can count your blessings.:eek:
Both my Panny LCD and EZ-17(when I still had it) acted the same for OTA virtual/real channel numbers. That is they only displayed the real channel numbers. You could, if you knew the real channel numbers, enter those in direct on the remote keypad, and it would take you directly to the virtual channel number. In my case it I typed in 35 ENTER, on my remote, up would pop virtual channel 11.1. At least that's how my Panny's handle real/virtual OTA channels. QAM could be different(don't have it).
Good luck with your EZ-17, if you ever get U99, let the real rant begin:p

My EZ17 will not accept the real HD QAM channel numbers like my TV does. Initially it was split, some of the HD were actual, some virtual. When Comast did a remap all were virtual only. And when they did a remap again it locked me out until I did another channel scan. You would think the channels that were unchanged would have been OK. But the remapping must somehow have affected the Pannys "look up table". Anyway it works now, but I initially thought the QAM tuner went out.