LG LST-3410A Review and Discussion - Page 12

Philly

If you correctly setup the guide, it will receive guide info via cable. If you tell the guide that you have a cable box, then bypass it, you must tell the guide setup that you are not using a box.

The wording of the spec ("NTSC, ATSC-8VSB over Terrestrial or Clear QAM over cable") might be taken to mean that the only cable tuning is Clear QAM, and that the only NTSC tuning is via Terrestrial.

Admittedly it's ambiguous. I'm glad to hear that it tunes analog cable just fine (but disappointed to hear that it won't also tune analog OTA if configured for cable).

Hyrax, I have basic plus 1 premium channel, I get maybe 12-15 digital and I see maybe another 20 that are scrambled and come up as such. My guess is that the rest of the digital channels are out of the range of the 3410.

Has anyone experienced cases where the box just locks up? This has now happened to me twice. Once I was watching a recorded SD show, and I put it on pause while I went into another room to check something. I came back about 5 minutes later. The signal was still "paused," however it wouldn't come out of that mode. Play, pause again, etc. didn't get any response. Power off from the remote control did power off, and then power on brought the unit back up - but it was still in a frozen non-responsive mode. It took a power off by disconnecting the power cord to restore normal operations. I had the power disconnected for about 15 seconds, and when powered back up, the time was wrong (set to about 30 minutes earlier), and the channel mapping on the TV Guide was back to the default (before I had remapped it).

This happened again this morning while I was again remapping channels. I had decided to tell it that I don't have a cable box (even though I do), because operation with the damn box is such a pain, and I think I would rather manually tune the cable box to the few channels that I get through cable.

I could probably live with a very occasional freeze-up, but not if it causes me to have to re-map channels every time - because remapping is not as straightforward as it should be.

{edit} The time did reset from the guide a few minutes later after I had left the set powered off.

Ben -
I've had a couple of lockups where I had to power down. When I restart all is OK, however. My lockups appear to be when it is having trouble tuning in a digital channel. So far they are annoying, but no where near as bad as what you're describing.
What do you mean by 'remapping'? I find it rather simple, so I assume we're doing different things. although I wish they had a 'delete all' button.

Mine quit tonight. I have a spectacular pixelated light and color show. I believe that I was sold a defective unit that was returned to Value Electronics. This unit has had problems from the beginning as I described in this forum. I recommend that no one buy one of these. The dealer refuses to respond to my inquiries, the company says they have no replacement units. I'm betting there is a systemic problem. I also have a phenolic smell coming out of the right rear corner. Looks like I will have to deal through the credit card company to try to obtain some justice. What a crappy outfit. In over 40 years of purchasing HiFi and Video gear, I have never run into such indifference on the part of a dealer or a manufacturer.

Sounds a little early to reach that conclusion. Mine is working fine except for audio problems that are partially my decoders fault as well.

I nly use mine to tune QAM HDTV from my comcast cable company, but it has been working without a glitch so far. I just wish they would get UPS and WGN in Hi-def!
Bes,
Chris

The pixelization stopped this morning and I was able to watch the 3 hours of recorded programs I tried to watch last night when it failed. The brightness level variance level is still there. I have noticed the audio dropout issue at least half a dozen times. My signal is in the good range so it is not a low signal problem.

Those of you who have no problem are not watching through the RGBHV connection, are you? Try watching it through there. I am waiting for a replacement unit to arrive.

I am using a Sanyo Z1 LCD projector and am not experiencing any issues whatsoever with brightness fluctuations on the RGBHV out.

In fact, the RGBHV out on this box provides the best HD PQ i have ever seen (granted I've only owned 2 other HD tuners though.)

MrHifi, sounds like you got a bum unit..

Hyrax,
I tried both 720p and 1080i. Either is preferable to letting the box select 480i, but neither is as good as the Sony when coming right off the splitter from the antenna.

Is anyone using the 3410 with a Sanyo Z2? I know there are issues with other LG products working with the Z2 over DVI (like the 3510A) so wondering if it was fixed on the 3410. My local dealer just got units in, and I'd like to verify that this works. Thanks.

John

Bump, Anyone?

John

ok... So I connected the unit to my computer monitor so I couild see the output of the unit at RGB with no rescaling. Picture from HD was just plain awesome. Tuned in channels as well as my DiSH 6000 and maybe even a little better on Fox.

Off Air in one direction I got
DC
NBC,ABC,CBS,Fox,Mhz,PBS

Recordings.
Hd recordings looked great from off air. I used the time slip; and also other comparisons and it looks exactly like what it live. No problems with break ups or drop outs.

TVGUIDE Turned unit off for about 5 hours in the middle of the day and it accuried the TVGuide Data. Kind of Cool. You can see programing for hours and hours in advance. My Dish 6000 always allowed this but it would take forever to get info for more than 3 hours ahead.

MAJOR GLITCH. You have to be watching the channel to get info about what is on or what will be on. BUMMER. Big step back in my opinion as I have always had browse on my DiSH network receivers.

Hooked it up to Starpower cable just to see what I would get. Tuned all SD channels between 1 and 99. Tuned in 135 as Cspan3 as a digital station. Did not find any other digital stations. Located FOX, NBC, CBS, ABC, and WETA HD stations. Then stragly it also picked up the digital music channels. Theye were all in the 158 or so register with each channel being a sub channel of 158. 158-1 -2 -3. Sd image was not that great over all.

Lost the ability to tune Local SD from antenna once cable was added to the mix.

Removed cable.

SD output of DiSH 6000 to HDD. Connected via VRL (Video Right Left). Box was set to scale image to 480 P and it did a damn fine job of it. Light on the aritfacts and not a lot of the various issues you get from doubling. Kind of content with the picture overall.

Can't watch one thing and record another. I have had sat for years so i am kind of used to this.

Can't watch playback of HDD while recording.

I could go on but that is a good deal of it for now.

The Way it lists recorded shows works pretty good. Abilities to FF Rew or time shift is pretty cool. Picture quality is 1st rate on HD.

PRICE. Now at $1000 it just doesn't work out so well. The 921 from DiSH would alow me to record and time shift from DiSH while watching something else. Plus it is a bigger HD and integrated. Now the big question... does the 921 work. If so... being $1000 for the 921. Its not a hard choice.

If this recorder were in the $500 range retail. I could see it doing a whole lot better.

Someone said you can watch a HDD show that you are recording. So if you start recording the program, and then start watching it 20 minutes later that this is OK (since there are 20 minutes of commercials to 1 hour of TV this would let you skip the commercials). Can you verify. Maybe you just can't watch a different recorded show, when another is recording?

John

Can't watch playback of HDD while recording.

My unit still has brightness level changes on the 1080i output. After 5 minutes it starts pixelating and makes the picture unwatchable. Tried putting an 18" fan on it to cool it down. Worked perfectly. Theres a temperature sensitivity issue here. Took away the fan and it went crazy. My unit is sitting on a table with no airflow restriction. Perhaps they should have included a muffin fan like many other systems with scalers and D/A converters. Yesterday after several more nasty calls to LGE Customer service, they said that a new unit was being mailed yesterday from Alabama. It has not arrived. The dealer meanwhile offered to exchange my unit after reading my comments here. Hope this thing resolves. This has to be my worse experience since 1972 when I carried my Teac 6010SL accross the country to California to have Teac put in a new Rell motor which was defective.

You can do this only by use of the Timeshift button at the beginning of the program. Then you can go backward and forward at will while the program continues recording in real time. Unlike TiVo, the unit is not always automatically writing to a HDD buffer.

So are you saying if you want to do this you don't actually set the show to record. You have to be at the TV/3410 when the show starts and you hit this timeshift button, and then come back in 20 minutes to start watching the show?

I have ReplayTV and with that if a show is recording I can come in at any point and start watching it from the beginning. Anyways just trying to clarify how this works as I haven't gotten mine yet.

John

I was thinking about this a bit more and all the problems with the 3510A are with the DVD player portion which is going to have to degotiate the HDCP with the Z2. With the 3410A when watching OTA or cable HD content is HDCP active? If not then this probably isn't an issue that folks would see unless the HD program cause the HDCP encryption flag (if that's how if works) to be active? Anyone know for sure?

John

Mine is INSIDE my cabinet (behind glass) with very little airflow and seems to work fine. I had this problem on my Sony HD-100, but it was known to run hot and shipped w/a fan (which I removed--but that's another story).
I have to think something else is going on there, unrelated to a heat issue (although it could be exaggerated by it).

As previously mentioned, the unit does not DEFAULT keep a record buffer all the time; the "Timeshift" button does that. So, whenever you hit "Timeshift", it begins to buffer (like a Tivo) and you can go forward/backward in time until you hit stop/exit. In other words, you don't have to necessarily be there when the show starts, but you need to be there at some point to start the function.
I don't have a problem with this (it's still convenient), but it begs the question: if you can watch/record w/ "Timeshift", why can't you record/playback two DIFFERENT things?
I still love the unit.

Stanton -
THis is way off topic, but what sort of cabinet do you have? Adding my 3410A to my stuff is just one more little bright light shining back at me and I'd like to put all of it behind tinted glass.

Thanks

So when you hit timeshift I'm assuming it's still recording to the hard drive. So it just keeps going until the drive fills up or is there some cutoff before that. What if you hit timeshift and then a show that is set to record? Does the recorded show override the timeshift or do you get both of them?

John

It is my understanding that Timeshifting uses a one hour block of the HDD. After you are timeshifting for over an hour, only the most recent 60 minutes is available, and the rest is lost.

Edit: Interesting note, after timeshifting, I noticed that the available time does NOT change in the program list. That may have something to do with the fact that you can timeshift but not record while watching another recording.

I don't have the 3410A yet, but I have the Zenith HDR230. A lot of the recording/timeshifting features sound like they are at least as good on the LG as they are on the Zenith. But not being able to timeshift for more than an hour is a big letdown.

On the Zenith I am able to timeshift for more than an hour. When stop is pressed, only the last timeshift segment is saved. If one wants to save the whole recording (or a portion greater than the last segment), a "clip edit" can be performed whereby a starting and an ending position are specified. (Multiple such ranges can be specified.)

I used to use the timeshift feature for MNF; I used a macro on my remote to start the timeshift, and if I wouldn't get home by the time the game ended, another macro on the remote performed the clip edit. (Well, actually, the remote wasn't smart enough to know when the game ended; it performed the clip edit macro four hours after starting the timeshift.)

As with the LG, the Zenith also does not change the remaining available time while the timeshift function is in operation.

Someone on an HDR230 thread indicated having forgotten to turn off timeshift one night and the unit wound up erasing all the saved programs. Maybe LG now limits the timeshift to one hour to prevent such from occurring?

Edit:
"Clip edit" is the wrong name for the operation; it should be "Clip Record". The 3410A manual uses the same name for the operation. Also, from what others are saying below, maybe it is possible to timeshift for more than an hour - that's great news.

I wanted to time shift the oscars but chickened out due to the one hour thing. I used replay instead which really sucked compared to the HD feed.

Monday afternoon I tried the timeshift function for several hours until I came home again. It worked just as the zenith and put the time shifted programs on the "list" in 1 hour blocks. I was able to go to the beginning and blow straight through to the present live recording.

The manual says you can time shift until the drive is full and then supposedly it deletes the beginning of this timeshift session.

fwiw

Lew

Do you know what happens in the case where you are timeshifting and there is a show programmed to record. Does one take presidence over the other, or are both still recorded? Thanks.

John

If you check out this thread, it notes that the power supply cable runs across the main board voltage regulator and blocks the cooling fins!!

His simple fix was a zip cord to pull back the cable off the regulator. You might be having this problem.

Troy

OK, I have had my LST-3410a for only 2 weeks. Over the past 2 weeks
that unit would not power up all the way 4-5 times. I had to power down
and then power it on again. I think I lost a pre-programmed show because
of this problem. The last few times I had to power on and off many
times before it came up. On the first power up it did not receive any of
the HD stations, had to power off and on agin to fix that.

Ok, now last night it took me a half hour to power it up and when it did
the unit did not have HD stations and also told me that it did not have
a harddrive. It gave me a message to call service, which i did and they
are now going to swap the unit. Which will take ???? days. I'll let you
all know.

I have also been having a similar problem. Last night I had it set to record an off-the-aid HD show that was a couple of hours long. The LG didn't stop recording when the show ended, and recorded until the disk was full. It failed to power down, and was locked-up when I checked it this morning. The only remote control command it would accept was power off. Then when powering back up, it was still stuck - no hello message, and unresponsive to the remote control. A complete power off via the power cord was necessary to bring it back. This is probably the sixth or 7th time this has happened in two weeks use.

I called LG service, and they appears very cooperative about sending another one out that they said I should get next week sometime. My concern is whether I will get one that's working right, or another one with similar problems.

Glad I haven't done the larger HD swap yet. I'll probably wait until the warantee is out, and look for a deal on a 250 or 300GB drive during that period.

The unit works fine for OTA - when it's working. For me the cable capabilities are useless since Cox scrambles everything in their digital service, and the analog Cable signal is of less quality than the signals I can get off the air.