Official Panasonic DMR-EZ28K thread - Page 22

I wish Brew God would reply. After all, everything worked until the DTV transition.

DMR-EZ28K:

Has anyone had the error where if they pause a recording, and resume play there will be no sound? The remedy is to rewind a few seconds and hit play and the sound will start up again. I am thinking the RW discs might be getting old.

Thanks

Update to my problem from 2 months ago: (updated firmware, unit worked for a few min and then after changing channels for a while I get a black screen, unit wont power up after reset, unplug, anything... as soon as HELLOs stop drive spins and then stays that way forever)

Pana wanted me to send it in. 2 weeks later I get a refurb unit with my DVDRam in a ziplock, returned from old unit. Hook it up, run setup, channel scan, everything is good. Flip channels for 10 min, screen goes black. Power off, wont power back up, exact same problem. This is a replaced unit, so my possible conclusions are #1 the latest firmware is crap, #2 my DVDRam is causing it, #3 other unknown craziness. Call Pana. Send it in they say. FOUR (!) weeks later I got another unit (my third) yesterday. They didnt take my stuck DVDRam out of my last unit.

Hook it up, setup, channel scan, its all good. Put in new DVDRam and immediately format it (in case new firmware has somethign weird) and remove it. Go to channel delete menu to remove spanish channels and poor signals, and after flipping through different channels there, screen goes black. SAME THING. Call Pana pissed off. They give me two options: send it in for a fourth unit, or get an EZ48 "its an upgraded unit for free!". Ugh.

So now I'm not happy at all.

But then I see CTEN's post above, and he has the EXACT same problem and I remember seeing channel 13-102 and 13-101 which were blank when I was add/deleteing channels. One thing I never tried was removing the damn antenna feed and seeing if it will turn on. Its sitting here at work in a box and I was either going to send it back to Pana or bring it to the parking lot and run it over. Now my theory is channel13 (local PBS) is broadcasting data on 13-101 and 13-102 (schedule? timedate? some other data?) and its FUBARing my EZ28. Thanks to CTEN I'm gona take it back home and see if I can turn it on with no antenna and delete 13-101/102 from the channel listing and see if I'm back in business.

(fingers crossed)

Have you been dealing with the corporate Panasonic Service Center (for repair of current models) in Elk Grove Village Illinois, or the Panasonic Customer Service Center (no repairs, just exchanges) in McAllen Texas?

Sometimes a bad DVD will cause all manner of problems. It's necessary to remove a bad DVD before assessing problems.

To manually remove a DVD from a DMR-EZ28 disc tray there is access to the DVD Drive Slide Cam through a slot in the bottom of the case. With a small, flat-bladed screwdriver the Slide Cam is moved from right to left to release the disc tray, then hook the tray with a large paperclip or similar tool and extend the tray to remove the DVD. Details are seen by clicking the attached thumbnails. The photos show a DMR-EZ17.

I was calling Panasonic 1-866 number, so I'm pretty sure thats corporate. They gave me two options: send it in for another EZ28 referb, or send it up and be "upgraded" to an EZ48. I suggested something was very wrong with the firmware and getting a new unit wouldnt change anything and she kinda said "thats all we do, I'm not a tech I can only put in for a replacement". i told her I'd have to look up the specs on a EZ48 and call back. I'm pretty sure I read it was much more buggy than an EZ28.

Thanks for the eject info! That would have saved me a DVDRam if I had known.

Update:
My unit is working! Thanks to CTEN. As soon as I powered it on with no antenna plugged in, it came up. The channel that it came up to was 13-101. I went into the favorite channel listing and deleted 13-101 and 13-102 and changed my channel up/down buttons to only show "favorites". So now I just need to remember that if I'm ever in the favorite channel listings even going over 13-101 or 102 will lock up the machine until its turned on with no antenna.

Theory:
Channel 13 in the NYC area is the local OTA PBS channel. Sometimes when you buy a new TV or DVR or anything with a tuner the instructions tell you to tune to your local PBS to have your clock auto set and get your latest schedule/tv listings. I believe Guide-Plus uses an OTA signal to get its schedule/TV listings. I think Channel 13 has started broadcasting these on 13-101 and 13-102. However it locked up my EZ28, and even a hard reset (channel up/down, reset button, leave unplugged, etc) wont reset what channel was last tuned it so my box was always turning on to this station, even tho I was just going by it in the channel favorites.

When I updated my firmware when this problem first happened, I had to go through the channel learn/setup thing and went by 13-101 when going down each channel to add/delete. And it died. And my referb replacement boxes did the same thing. Why does an EZ28 lock up when on this channel? I have no idea other than the guess its putting out a signal that the programmers never bargained for and let it overwelm the tuner and lock up the whole machine. Piss poor IMO.

If not for CTEN, I'd be shipping my box to Pana for a third time and probably getting an EZ48 and then having the exact same problem.

Whew. Thank god for this website and CTEN.

Now do I call Pana and bitch that I want my $25 DVDRam replaced, or just leave well enough alone. lol

Where did you send the earlier Panasonics, Illinois or Texas?

I'm guessing that you were given the direct number to the McAllen Texas product exchange center. If that's the case you might be the first AVS member to report speaking directly to folks in McAllen Texas. Please share that 866 number for posting in the thread, "Panasonic Repairs? The ONLY place for warranty or out-of-warranty service!"

The common Customer Service contact number is 1-800-211-7262, the 1-888-439-5676 number is the corporate repair center in Elk Grove Village Illinois and the 1-847-468-5543 number is the corporate repair center in Elgin Illinois.

I was always given the Mcallen Center address in Texas to send to the units to. The 866 number I called was 1-866-907-9111 which I think its just a generic warranty repair number. When I called Mcallen directly I got it from my workorder/invoices from my refurb units: 1-956-683-2930u

ps- my unit has now been working flawlessly 2 days. I cant believe this whole thing was a data overload from a secondary channel broadcasting data. I was about to throw my unit in the trash and spend $400 on a ChannelMaster PAL system.

Well, hell - if you were willing to spend that much, you might as well have considered something much more reliable like a refurbished TiVo HD (from TiVo.com) with lifetime service for $500 instead.

Not having my unit for almost 2 months during end-of-seaon "here come the resolution to the show and cliff hanger for next season" spring TV might have done it. I'm calm and sane now.

Yeah for that much I could have gotten cable or dish with DVR service for a few years too.

I am in the breaking-in and learning phase of my recent DMR-EZ28 purchase. So far, I am very impressed with the unit. Sometimes when I stop a DVD-RAM and eject it, I receive an on screen message, "Operation Stopped, Press OK, The unit will power off and then automatically will start Self Checking."

If I select OK, it performs this function. If I ignore it, it has no effect. Can anyone explain this? I find nothing in the owners manual about this. These are DVD-RAMS that were made on another DVDR.

The DMR EZ28 unit, as well as the DMR EZ48 both utilize a modified form of the Dreambox mainboard, as discovered whemn I investigated the chip numbers - I reported it on DTVUSAForums.

When it comes to playing DivX videos, there seems to be two versions that the player accepts, others it refuses since the player does not understand the specific stream optimizations. I'll have to play around with the encoder settings.

The DMR EZ28 and DMR EZ48 will not accept remote control commands other than the original equipment - this is a fix to prevent region-unlocking by remote control codes which can be achieved on the EZ27.

What's more, the player has a special region control RPC2 watermark detection enforcement. Even if you use DeCSS and convert the movie to RPC1, it still can find the control codes in the stream, and will issue out a "This disc is not playable in your region." error. URRGH! I tried discs burnt from several brands of DVD players. I have two dozen copies of "Impy Superstar Missione Luna Park" and it won't play on this player - I can only use a DIVX recoded file.

As for the ATSC capabilities, it makes fine recordings. Here's two episodes of "Animalia" I recorded:

0114 "Brain Drain" megaupload.com/?d=P4OQBKKP
0217 "The Dragon and the Night" megaupload.com/?d=BG5HZA1B
(copy and paste into browser)

The only time it has problems is when the DTV signal drops out. It sometimes gets stuck and needs to be reset. The DVD-RW must be reformatted if it was scheduled to record during such a dropout, and it starts recording during the dropout.

This DVD player fails at being a party DVD player as it accepts too few formats.

If you still have the DMR EZ27, I'd like to have it. I've got a few films that are not released in the U.S. i.e. "Impy's Wonderland" "Wickie und der Starke Manner" "Hui Buh" "El Raton Perez" and "Bradner Kaspar"

Until I read your post, I was under the impression that the DMR-EZ28 did not have a QAM tuner, since it is not mentioned in any of Panasonic's documentation. After having just purchased this model and doing a channel scan with the straight cable to the RF input (no antenna), I was surprised to see how many digital clear channels I was able to receive from my cable provider. So in addition to the ATSC tuner for OTA, apparently this model does have a QAM tuner. I can't understand why this is not mentioned. It has to be good selling point!

If an EZ27 can be region-unlocked does that mean an EZ17 can also be unlocked?

If it can be region-unlocked in order to play a PAL DVD, does it also convert the output to NTSC?

I record shows on my EZ28 several times a week from a raw cable feed. But the QAM tuner does not like the signals from my cable, so I must use an external tuner TO RECORD (watching is fine). I have tried DVD-RAM and DVD-+RW with same problem. With the internal tuner I will get an E19 and have to power cycle. Obviously I can record the same channels with other hardware like a Magnavox H2160. I made the mistake, after getting higher up the support food chain, of sending the unit to Texas. They returned a refurb unit in worse physical shape, without the update and it also didn't work. So I gave up and went to a tuner since I like DVD-RAM.

If you can record a digital cable channel program you are lucky. My cable company is not one of the big guys. Maybe this is why they don't push the QAM tuner.

Before the DTV transition, most PBS stations sent out a clock signal, along with closed captioning. This function, call XDS, is what some manufacturers still reference when they say "tune to a PBS channel". Stations should be using the digital equivalent, PSIP, but most don't and those that try get it wrong. If I force my Magnavox to use a cable analog PBS channel for its clock, it will set the wrong time at midnight, every night. If I set it to use Fox, it happens once a week. The "XDS" data is still active since it allows "home office" to send affiliates data about shows and other stuff. In the digital world there are packets that can be used for many reasons. Some channels broadcast show names, time remaining, call letters, etc..

Next week I'll my set my EZ28 to PBS and watch what happens.

Oops. Can't set clock channel like the Mag H2160 or my VCRs. Can't test that problem. Sorry.

That would kinda suck if you had a widescreen TV, and you were only able to record and display 16:9 pillarboxed (or had to zoom it into blurrydom).

If you knew it was gonna be like that, you could have saved considerable dough and went with the EA-18 instead. At least you'd have had the IR blaster to change channels on the external tuner.

Of course, if your TV's 4:3 right now, it wouldn't matter - but should you ever upgrade to widescreen it will.

(If your cable box puts out anamorphic widescreen over s-video or composite, it would be moot of course, too. But I don't think many do.)

I have an EZ17 and it appears to tune all the clear QAM channels except one, a local PBS station. My Sony HDTV gets it but the Panny cannot. It makes me wonder if it's frequency is shifted slightly & the Panny's tuner cannot lock in on it. Sort of like the old days when some cable companies used IRC or HRC freqs.

(Notice to the left: no cable box or cable card.)

I'm not sure what I'm doing right, but a recording of HiDef onto the DVD plays back fine (stereo only) on my 32XBR9. Letterbox only happens with SD digital sources. Barn doors only show when my local HD stations are sending out their SD content (I hate school closings). I feed the HD DVD recording (it's only 400 lines of course) via HDMI to the Sony TV, set for "full pixel", not "full" where it would stretch the display. I save my Mag H2160 for SD recording, with the EZ28 used for 'overflow' on HD programs since, like you said, I can't control the tuner.

If I knew the EZ28 tuner didn't work with my cable feed, I would have kept using my Toshiba RX-50 since I also feed it with a tuner and it has DVD-RAM compatibility with the EZ28. Such is life.

If it does conversion, it would be quite a departure for Panasonic. I have an EH69, which supports both PAL and NTSC, but it will not conconvert from one to the other. If a device that is designed to support both won't convert, it seems really unlikely that a device that is not designed to do both would convert. I don't KNOW, but it seems unlikely (to me).

The only reason I question a PAL to NTSC is that I see a lot of DVD players on the web that are region free & advertise they also convert to NTSC. And several of these sell for $59.95. Either these retailers are adding a very inexpensive conversion circuit or if the player is made to output NTSC then maybe whatever it takes to convert is already built in. I don't know.

Perhaps what those advertisers are trying to say is that these players will play PAL and NTSC discs and display them on TVs capable of displaying PAL and NTSC signals. That's not conversion from one standard to another standard.

There are players that actually convert PAL to NTSC.

I have an older JVC player XV-N44 that converts PAL to NTSC nicely. It converts a PAL 50Hz 25 frame per sec 768 by 576 resolution and converts it to NTSC 29.96 frames per sec at 720 by 480 60 hz.


-EDIT
This player conforms to NTSC standards. Discs marked “NTSC” on the disc label, package or jacket can be played. Discs recorded in PAL are converted to NTSC for playback on a NTSC TV.

I know both these have the above function

-Pioneer DV-420V-K
-JVC XV-N680B

Numerous other players will also do it.

JVCs are in fact known for this. I have a JVC combo player HR-XVC11B that is region free and does a very good job of PAl to NTSC conversion. Neither of these "features" are mentioned anywhere in the advertisments or the owner's manual. The machine doesn't care about the manual, it does the conversion anyway.

I also have a Vizio television that will display PAL (576i) perfectly, even though it doesn't say anything about it in the manual. I don' tknow why they don't advertise this feature, but if they did, then they would have to warrant it. I have a small DVD display type Polaroid player that does conversion too. As an early stupid move, I bought a stand alone converter from W-I. The converter does a very poor job. The Polaroid is better than the stand-alone converter, but the JVC is far superior to the others.

I am unable to set the clock automatically with DMR-EZ28. I know there are signals available via my cable provider, as it works with the TVGOS in my TV and worked with my previous DVDR which I have just replaced. My scan gave me all of the available channels including analog, digital and clear QAM.

My setup connection is the straight cable to the RF input on the DVDR. RF output on DVDR to TV RF input. The DVDR is output via HDMI to a TV input. I also have S/Video and L/R audio output from cable box to Input 1 on DVDR. The cable box is input with a dedicated straight cable to the RF input on the box. The cable box is output via HDMI to another HDMI input on TV.

I perform the automatic clock set which runs about 25 minutes and ends with, Auto Clock Setting is incomplete, press [OK] and set the clock manually".

One of main reasons for buying this model instead of the DMR-EA18 was to avoid setting the clock manually! I would appreciate any suggestions.

First, check my post #645 above.

You said "main" reason. If it was the "only" reason I would take it back.

TVGOS gets its clock from the TVGOS data. The EZ28 doesn't use that method or I would have a clock too. My three Sony DHG-HDD250 DVR units all have a clock set via their host channel. But that's because my cable company injects the old V8 TVGOS signal into my C-SPAN analog feed. I still cannot record digital QAM256 channels with the EZ28, but that's my issue.

I think I see your point. My previous DVDR, Toshiba RD-XS55, had a TVGOS which also set the clock. Originally, the "host" station was a local PBS affiliate, which could be seen in the diagnostics menu on the DVDR. After the OTA digital changes were made last year, the new "host" station is my local CBS affiliate. The clock kept perfect time. Apparently, there is no signal via my cable affiliate that will set this clock. I'll guess I'll live with it.

Although I preferred a unit with an auto clock feature, I am very impressed with the tuner in this unit. Both the SD and HD channels I can receive via the tuner are excellent quality allowing me, if necessary, to have another source to record from and not tie up my cable box. Also, the video quality of bought DVD's and home made DVD's are identical when played back in this DVDR and my Sony Blu-Ray player.

Currently, I've got thirteen recorders (including one DMR-EZ28) set up for daily use. Times provided through Comcast may vary widely from the actual time. For that and other operational/practical reasons (primarily with Magnavox and Philips HDD/DVD recorders) all thirteen of my recorders are set up with AUTO CLOCK set to OFF.

Most of the thirteen recorders have clocks that drift a bit. Since most of the recorders are stacked it's easy to see when it's time to reset the clocks. Another clock drift indicator for regularly scheduled TV shows is a clip at the beginning or ending of recorded programs.

About once every two to three weeks I reset all thirteen clocks according to time.gov.

I agree. The main/only reason I bought the EZ28 was for it's DVD-RAM ability since I have a Toshiba RX-50. Both the Toshiba and the EZ28 record (via S-Video) from signals I capture with HD tuners. The quality is great. Just curious, but how good does a digital cable recording look from the built-in tuner on the EZ28? I've never been able to make that work. And yes, the manual clock runs fast. Quite fast.

The recorded, clear channel QAM HD channels are excellent. The SD channels are OK but the same quality as I receive via the straight cable to my Sony XBR6 TV. Recently, my cable provider began passing all SD channels via QAM-256 through the cable boxes. There is a remarkable difference between the picture quality of SD channels passed through the cable box compared the straight cable. I remember years ago with the analog boxes, it was just the opposite.

Thanks for the information. I guess I'm the only person in the world that can't record digital QAM using only the EZ28 tuner. Someday.....