Philips DVDR3455H/37 - Page 31

Arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........... After 5 years of mostly faithful service I finally had my 3455/37 go down last night. I had just watched and then deleted a fresh HDD recording. There was still plenty of room on the HDD so that wasn't the problem. I think the HDD may have crashed. She wouldn't cut off, and even unplugging and replugging power cord did not get her back on track. I kept getting just the Blue Philips screen, but nothing but the background, like it was halting at a Boot screen. I want to try to salvage her as the unit was very handy for recording Throwaways, and also because it gave me one more DVDR without the Maggy Remote crossover problem. I will also need to do the DVD Drive Door repair. As usual, failure came at an unexpected and inconvenient time.

Tim, IIRC, you said you were only able to pull off the 250GD HDD upgrade one time via the Philips itself. Is this correct? Will a PATA 160GB work better? Thanks for any help.

Do you have recordings that you want saved? If not try a 250. If you have the firmware upgrade, it is worth the shot to try. I would be willing to create a working 250 gig if you can send me one with return shipping pre-paid. If you put a 250 in and it ask for the firmware, you are good to go. If it just sits there and keeps rebooting, then it did not like "that" 250. That does not mean that 250 will not work, I can still clone a 250 and get it working for you.

If you want to keep the recordings, you can always try to clone it onto a new 160. It does not nessesarily mean the drive is crashed, it just means that part of the drive it needs to boot with is corrupted. Of course if you put it in the computer to be cloned and the disks are not spinning and it is not recognized, then it is dead.

Tim, you are definitely one of the Big Dogs when it comes to this machine. Thanks to you and some others who's posts I went back and read I have her back up and running with a Samsung Spinpoint ATA133 120gb PATA HDD that I had handy, using it as a backup Image copy of Windows XP. I have that XP machine backed up on 2 other HDD's anyway. I didn't want to buy another PATA HDD unless I was certain the unit was reparable.

First I did the DVD Drawer fix. Took the belt off, took it to a TV Shop - he said no dice on parts but that he uses O-Rings that are similar in size when he needs belts. He sent me to a local hardware store that just happened to have the size I needed. BTW, a plumbing shop might be a good source for these O-Ring Replacement belts too. Thanks to the excellent picture walkthrough posted by lmonfa (who only ever made one post - but a great one!) it was fairly easy. Hardest part was getting the belt over the Bigger wheel where it pressed so close to the side of the Philips. Used a tiny screwdriver and got her worked past the sticking point.

Then I removed the old HDD (It was still spinning up but caught in a loop), took my 120gb Samsung plugged her in, screwed her down and did the Format from CD. After Load Copy Reboot cycle I shut the unit down. It rebooted but was not right so I shut her down again and 2nd time the I powered her up the Firmware Update process began. Went off without a hitch. Very happy about that.

Tim, I greatly appreciate your willingness to help. You have been a leader in this particular thread, and as my situation just proved, this older thread is STILL useful!

Fortunately there was nothing irreplaceable on that 160 original hdd. I had a the first 3 seasons of The Office, but I am about over that show anyway. If I ever want it again I will rent or buy it. I may try to format that HDD under Windows and then run some diagnostics on it just for giggles. See if maybe it has bad sectors.

Sounds good. The next time I try a larger drive, your steps may even help solve the mystery of how to "initialize" a drive. On the 2nd reboot was the firmware disc in the drive or did it ask for it? When you say shut down was that unplugging from the wall?

Thanks

Tim, after the first pass with the firmware disc, the system refused to kick out the Update CD, going back to the Load Copy Boot cycle, so I unplugged from power, plugged back in with the CD still in the tray. Upon initializing, after the first Philips Blue Screen, Tuner "Noise" popped up (I was not connected to a TV input yet) and the message popped up "New Firmware Update" available (or something along those lines). I hit OK on the remote and we were off to the races.

I am thinking maybe I should NOT have placed the CD in the tray before the system did the 1st pass initialization of the "new" HDD ? Then, perhaps maybe place the CD in the tray.

At any rate I recorded and viewed 5 hours of programming on the 3455 last night. I have my eye on some PATA 250gb HDD's Walmart is closing out. Right now they are still way to high, but if they drop enough I will buy one or more and at least try the 250gb HDD upgrade.

BTW, I did a quick format under Windows XP on the 160gb Western Digital I pulled form the 3455. Then I ran ChkDsk and Western Digital Diagnostics Long Test and both showed the HDD 100% healthy. I wonder what is up with that?

If you get the channel "noise", then that means the 3455 had no problems with the hard drive. It will not do anything though, until a firmware disk formats the drive. I think putting the disk in may have helped, but it has been two years since I was experimenting. Hopefully, I can try your steps soon and re-check some larger drives. Thanks.

I probably would have ran chkdsk first before quick format. The format in writing the table may have "fixed" something. chkdsk under dos, should have stated if there were unusebale marked sectors. Once these are marked, it would be 100% healthy, but not 100% useable. Of course the 3455 could have also "crossed referenced" its own file system and could not resolve it.

Tim, SATA Drives are so much cheaper than IDE these days. Can you show/tell me exactly what type adapter you have used to make SATA drives work in the 3455? Will SATA 6.0gbps drives work? Thanks in advance.

This is the one that I use. The problem is not that they are cheaper, but PATA's are harder to come by. Remember though 160 and 250 Sata's are getting hard to find also. I would think that if one could find a 250 sata laptop drive, they would work fine also. The 6gbps does not matter. The adaptor converts the sata to the 3455 in the speed that is needed. If you can find any external hard drives that are 250 (not WD) you can pop the shell and use them. You cannot use the WD, since they only have a USB interface, not a sata.

Thanks Tim. I appreciate the link. FWIW, at New**g the cheapest 250gb PATA is $70. A 250gb SATA is available from $41 on up. Pretty big difference.

The Wallyworld 250gb clearance PATA drives I mentioned are Seagates at $82 plus tax. Very limited quantity, but they will have to drop waaaaay below that for me to purchase there.

You can also get the adaptor there for 19.99. That still brings the price to $61.00. You will only have to buy it once though. You could also run a sata cable out to a docking station if you needed to. I am not sure though how long 250 gig will be around. I sure wish I could get a 500 hundred to work. The seagate 2.5 external will be a lot cheaper when they clearance from wally world due to the fact they were originally half as much as the old PATA's when they came out. It is a shame that the clearance price is more than it cost to by a new drive. They should just cut their losses and discount them 75%.

I agree about Wally world should cut their price. Last PATA HDD I bought was a WD 320gb Caviar Blue from Staples. I waited 'til it dropped to $35 before I popped.

Ok, it is official. I was able to get a WD 250 Sata Laptop 2.5 drive with my IDE to Sata adaptor to work in the 3455. I cloned my failing Seagate Pata drive. A normal 3 hour clone took 7 hours due to the fact that at around 79% it slowed way down due to about 80 bad sectors.

I started out with a Seagate Laptop drive, but in the cloning process, I had a lot of "writing" errors. Instead of trying another one, I just went to a WD. It may have just been the one drive, but the closest Microcenter is out of the way and since I had to drive by for work I did not want to keep going back and forth too many times. So, if one can find a sale ($39.99 for the drive) and a good deal on the adaptor, it is still a far price, and the laptop drive should draw less power.

Just one little bit of information. I found an adaptor (10.00 on sale for 7.00), but it was hard wired as Drive 1. I suppose one could solder the missing jumper and short it as Drive 0. The adaptor did not come with any schematics. The 3455 will not recognize the adaptor unless you can jumper it as drive 0, or Master. It will not work as Slave or 1.

This recorder goes 24/7, so will keep every one informed as to how it holds up.

To All,

I went thru all the pages quickly but can't seem to find the solution for my problem. Hopefully the group here can give me some idea on how to fix my problem.

A few days my DVDR3455 unit stop working. Did the re-cycle the power and other things, but nothing work. When I press the standby button, it is going thru the boot-up, show the light blue wallpaper with no Philips logo on TV, DVD spin, HDD spin, black screen, and back to begining again. LED display show "PHILIPS" on it, prior me pressing the Standby button, it show the time.

I download the firmware and put it in the DVD drive, but it doesn't give me the prompt that people had said here. I tried put in another HDD, same thing. When I connect my HDD to my computers (WinXP and Win7) and it want me to Initial the Disk --- which I said no so far.

Is there anything I can do? Is my unit dead? The HDD seem okay. If it is, how can I get the data out?

I do have another DVDR3575 unit, but my family like the 3455 over the 3575. Main reason is that we like the fact we can record the 6-hours captured data to HDD, which the "Pause Live TV" from the 3575 can't (or we do not know how). We hate the fact that if we can't view all the stuff that we had captured, once it hit the 12 hours mark, we will lost everything that we captured. Unlike the 3455 unit, it will just keep the last 6 hours of stuff that we capture - FIFO.

Help Please.

Thanks in advance.

If you can find another HDD the same size, you can try to clone the old drive.

Do not do this in windows!!! You have to boot the computer with cloning software and do it that way.

What size HDD did you try? The machine so far will only recognize a 250Gig or smaller (160Gig is the standard). It could be the main PC board that has stopped functioning properly.

Looking for a little help with a Phillips DVDR3455H. I just bought it at a pawn shop with the intentions of using it to only copy VCR tapes to DVD for my wife. I came without a remote so I powered it up and tried 5 different remotes I have and none would operate it. I tried a MX-450, A MX-850, and a URC R6 from Universal remote control, and also the programable remotes that came with my Mits tv and Integra receiver. None would operate it. I found a remote on ebay that is supposed to work but before I put any money in this unit I would like to verify if it actually works. Any ideas or suggestions. From reading the manual I downloaded it looks like it cannot be operated without a remote. When I hooked it to my tv and powered it up it went to a screen for setting the time, without a remote it will not go any farther.
Thanks

Hope this thread is still active.

I have the DVDR3455 and experienced some problems with the unit about 3 years ago while it was still under warrenty. (maybe 4 years ago) The unit got sent in and came back perfect. A week or 3 ago the device wouldn't start up correctly/ at all. When i power it on, the HDD active light goes on for a second or so and shows the Philips logo on the screen and then shuts down.
Being out of warrenty, i opened it up and disconnected the HDD data cable, nothing changed. after that i disconnected the power to the HDD aswell, and the unit got stuck at the startup process it seems, the blue HDD active light stays on and the Philps screen shows on the TV

I also tried connecting a FAT32 formatter 40GB seagate drive to the unit, but still the same problem occurs as with the standard drive. so my guess is the HDD powerup hardware/sequence is corrupt?

anyone else encountered such problems?
thank you for any help at all
Stephan

Gday Maynard

I've also used a series of Universal remotes which don't work with the Philips, the only one that works (for me) is the Logitech Harmony programmable remotes (as you can go to their online database and choose the Phillips). Mine is the 525 Harmony but in theory all the Harmonies should work (as they access the same online database).

Cheers

seevee

Hello all of you 3455 users that are still out there. I have not posted nor have even signed onto this forum, much less this thread in almost a year. Someone sent me an IM yesterday which has brought me back here today. I think that I can still help people out to a certain degree. I am still running one for about 19 hours a day, with back up units standing by in various stages of ability. In case any one is interested, I have 3 Pioneer 810 DVD burner units still chugging away and they are older than the 3455's.

It may be possible to salvage a "dead" hard drive, but I can also create a working 250 Gig Drive if any one can still find a new one around that works. If one is willing to try a SATA to IDE converter, even a 250 or 160 sata laptop hard drive will work. Depending on how comfortable you are at removing the hard drive, sending me just the hard drive has worked in the past. I do not charge anything, just that all shipping is handled by the one seeking assistance.

From what I have seen if you can get it to at least boot to the Phillips screen and then it re-boots, then it is more than likely a defective hard drive that cannot properly boot any more. About the only way to confirm that though is swapping drives. I would hate for someone to purchase a drive, just to find out it was not a bad drive, but at least one can always use the drive in a computer or other DVR setup. On the flip side putting a new drive in will require one to have the firmware burned onto either a CD or DVD before trying a new drive. It also may work if you have a 200 or 250 gig drive, so one may want to try that route before sending a drive to me. I only got it to work one time and since then, I had to clone the drive. If one has worked with computers, then hooking your old drive and a new drive up in a bar bones system with a DVD drive that boots with cloning software, then that software will make a clone of your old disk onto the new disk. It could take quite a while or die due to the extent of the damage in the defective drive. But that is basically how to salvage or replace a drive. If enough of the drive is transfered, it may be possible to insert the cloned drive. IF it boots to TV, you may be able to salvage some shows, if the drive was not fully cloned, only partial, then you may want to format the drive and start fresh after salvaging what you can before starting to record full time again.

This is all from the top of my head, so re-reading my earlier post may be safer, but I am willing to brush off any cobwebs, if needed.

Maybe someone can tell me it's worth trying to replace my drive on my 3455H.

I've used the firmware CD before with success when my DVR gets "stuck," about 3+ times in the past 5 years.

Today it got stuck while transferring to a DVD. After rebooting it now gets to the bluish water droplet background screen with PHILIPS appearing on the machine display itself, but not on the screen. Then it goes into cycle of rebooting. I can hold down the OPEN button and get it to read my firmware CD. This results in LOAD, COPY, BOOT in the display, but then it returns to a continuous reboot.

If I replace the drive, I think I just need to get it to read the firmware CD, and from there it will allow me to initialize. Is that correct? I think cloning is unnecessary since I don't care about the old recordings. Also, I tried plugging the DVR drive into an XP machine. I used a program called partition magic to verify that it thinks the drive exists but did not touch it.

(If I replace the unit, I'd like something that can record from an external (VCR / non-digital) source and burn DVDs. I'll look through the latest forum posts for a new machine, but I thought maybe someone here has a recommendation since we probably have some similar needs.)

Thanks.
Edited by rrgg - 12/31/12 at 1:03pm

Are there step-by-step instructions for replacing the hard drive? I haven't found that post yet. I've been searching through this thread but only find bits and pieces. I don't care about my old drive, so I assume I don't need to clone it. I did this:

1. Check for master jumper setting on the drive
2. Install the new drive (it's a 2.5" PATA 100GB Seagate Momentus, so I used an adapter)
3. Turn on the power and hold down open/close
4. After letting it cycle the door doesn't open (known typical problem)
5. DVR reads LOAD
6. Manually open the drive (switch underneath)
7. Press close
8. DVR still reads LOAD but nothing happens.

You can see in my previous post that it goes through LOAD, COPY, BOOT with the old drive, so I'm puzzled as to why it now won't read my CD. Thank you.

Have you seen this?

 

Post #2 has some good add-on info (maybe more in subsequent posts too).

Thanks! I hadn't seen that.

It seems like I've done what I'm supposed to but maybe the 100GB replacement drive is just not recognized since it's small.

However, I noticed in another post (#47) someone fixed their system by reformatting the original hard drive. I guess that is worth a shot. I don't know what he means by "upgrade code" though, unless he's just talking about the firmware upgrade:
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/311434-I-fixed-my-Philips-DVDR-3455H-dvd-hdd-recorder?p=2060156&viewfull=1#post2060156

The next post indicates there's a "erase HDD" command in the 3455:

 

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/311434-I-fixed-my-Philips-DVDR-3455H-dvd-hdd-recorder?p=2060157&viewfull=1#post2060157

Yes, I realize that, but I can't get that far. Instead of replacing the hard drive he seemed to fix things by reformatting it externally (with NTFS, the wrong format).

I have tried different hard drives no success try cloning software no succes does anyone have a step by step tutorial specific for 3455h model that has really been successfull everybody talks about doing this and that but are never specific i'm starting to believe it is not true.

Hope some one comes fordward with this.