Panasonic DMR-EH55 User Review and Questions - Page 26

This may not be quite the right place to post this question, the EH55 would certainly fit my needs, but it appears to be outside my budget. I just recently got a decent HD flat screen TV and the ability to receive digital TV. Didn't think it was a big deal before, now it's all I want to watch I'm only on basic cable so I get the HD version of the OTA channels and a few other HD channels (including a couple of CineMax movie channels for some reason). My old VCR obviously isn't going to cut it anymore. I have no desire to pay for a cable box or a channel guide service like TiVo. So something that does TVGOS seems the way to go.

All I really want do do is record HDTV when I'm not home. A DVD burner is not an absolute necessity, but certainly a nice bonus. I'd be happy with some sort of HDD recorder with an HD tuner. Don't know why something like this isn't available, at least I haven't seen one. It's also not clear to me what units have true HD tuners because apparently not all units with digital tuners actually can receive HD.

Just looking for some advice what to get for say in the $200 range (used or refurbished). A DVD recorder is a possibility but they seem to have limited recording time at true HD quality. There's all kinds of Panny stuff on eBay but it's all soooo confusing what does what TIA

Hi Rick ~

The EH-55 doesn't record in true HD (and I'm not sure if anything does yet, but certainly not in your price range) -- I went through that last year on this forum when my wife and I switched to DirecTV.

If you have to stick to cable, my recommendation would be to ask your cable company for an HD box with a 200GB or so HDD in it. The monthly charge should be an extra $10-20 but it's worth every penny. The one I had through BrightHouse worked a little like TiVo (without a lot of the extras) and a lot like what I have on the one I got from DirecTV.

Transferring to media in HD is still way out of my price range but I'm sure will come down in a few years, like all things electronic

Good luck!
~Gary

Thanks for the info guys

I have since reformatted the hard drive (as suggested by someone on this thread) and am keeping my fingers crossed that this helps alleviate this problem (time will tell). I suspect that the EH55 has bad FW that doesn't deal well with hard drive fragmentation. So after the drive gets fragmented enough, the problem starts popping up. Reformatting may be a solution.

It may also help to not delete some recordings and leave others while continuing to record new programs. This practice will tend to fragment the hard drive. Even deleting all of the recordings doesn't seem to help, only reformatting (I hope).

I have a Panasonic DMR-ES35V DVD/VCR recorder and have a leaky capacitor and am getting U61
error. In this post you refer to photographs of this problem. Does this instruction refer to DMR-ES35V?
Please send me e-mail where I can get the post where these photographs are shown.

jozien

In my posts in the below linked thread I attached some photos that I thought showed leakage of the largest electrolytic capacitor in the power supply section of a DMR-ES35V. Others pointed out that the material I thought was leakage was resin used in the manufacturing process to keep the capacitor in place. The capacitor discussions, including attached or linked photos are found in this thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1055111

I have a different DMR-ES35V that did have substantial leakage from the largest power supply electrolytic capacitor (C11108). I replaced that capacitor but did not take photos at the time. (An after-the-fact photo of that cleaned-up capacitor is found attached to one of my posts in the above linked thread.) The DMR-ES35V that received a new C11108 capacitor displayed the U61 error before and after capacitor replacement.

Subsequent to the capacitor replacement I found that the U61 error may be related to a problem with the digital circuit board (found on a sub-platform under the DVD drive on a DMR-ES35V). This digital circuit board bears the number VEP79132. I have just revised an earlier post in the "DMR-ES15 and U61 Error" thread attaching a photo of that model's main board. I also give advice concerning parts machines. See this post:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...4#post13360104

Today I added another post to that thread. That post expands upon the earlier posts and attaches photos showing top and bottom views of the VEP79132 board:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0#post14762450

In this post I mention the extent of parts swapping, adjustments and repairs with my DMR-ES35V and DMR-ES15 models:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...9#post13706919

If there is no source for parts swapping one must consider whether it is feasible to use the $130 flat-rate repair offered by the corporate Panasonic Service Center in Elk Grove Village IL, or to purchase a new or "Refurbished by Panasonic" machine, see this post for more information concerning refurbished Panasonics:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5#post14759445

The following post describes the disadvantages of taking a Panasonic to a local "authorized" shop and the advantages of the Panasonic Service Center at Elk Grove Village:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1056657

In the case of high-end hard drive machines the only choice may be Elk Grove Village.

Like you Jay, I did the reformat re. the "early abort". Following Panasonic support, I also did a firmware update earlier, that never helped. It seems the reformat improved things some but not all that much. With the reformatted drive 90% empty, the "early abort" recording problem has started again. You get 5 to 10 seconds of a recording before it stops. In the thumbnail there is only a network label, not the name of the program.

Paul

I now see that falcon58 posted this on 04-02-08 re. aborted recording...

My eh55 kept stopping recording after 10 seconds and showed system error in the history for that show. Panasonic said it was a bad sector on the hard drive it needed to be replaced and I needed to update the software.

I'm using a Panasonic DMR-EH75V with a Zenith DTT-901 CECB. I've found that using all 4 digit numbers to work better for me. You use a 2 digit channel with a 2 digit sub channel thus 8.3 is 803 (unit actually sends 0803) and 44.2 would be 4402. So far this has worked perfectly for me but I've only been trying it for about a week so far.

Originally Posted by sggoodri
Update: I have been having some problems with IR blaster control of the Zenith due to the way my Panasonic DMR-EH55 sends the channel command twice. Sometimes it sends the second command so soon after the first that instead of 171 tuning to 17.1 and then 171 tuning again to17.1, the Zenith sees 171171 and interprets this as 17.11 followed by 7.1 !

It looks like the commands are spaced apart better if the DVR is OFF when the recording is scheduled. Most (or all?) of my shows have been recorded properly while the DVR was off and I wasn't watching, but when a recording started while I was watching a previously recorded program the tuner control problem surfaced. It looks like the problem happens when the DVR tries to automatically change channels when the DVR is currently on, but I wonder if it will also happen if I try to record two programs on different channels back to back.

Ditto - I posted this problem in January. Because of aborted recordings I sent my EH55 to Elk Grove but asked them to fix both problems. They say they put in a new HD, pcb & updated firmware - I'm still getting the double channel command ONLY on back-to-back recordings. sggoodri, tscheer, Essex502 have had the same problem, there is a systemic bug there that Panasonic hasn't addressed. Not point in sending it back until they root out the cause - I've got a month left under warranty.

I have a EH-55 and CM-7000 and so far I have a 100% success rate on probably 100 different events. Truth be told I don't think I ever have any back to back events and I believe my machine has been off probably 80% when the scheduled event starts.
I do get the double channel entry every time though under the following circumstances. That is if I channel surf on the DVDR and I hit next channel before the OSD has went away on my CM-7000, it probably takes 5 seconds to go away. For this reason and others I never channel surf through my EH-55/CM-7000.
I also have a Zenith 901 but have it hooked up to a ES-30v which doesn't have a IR blaster.
Maybe I'll do some experiments on B to B events and report back if I run into problems. Otherwise I'm 100% satisfied with my setup. I just hope everything continues to work post 2/09.

Why wouldn't it? If you mean the TVGOS, no, not without D/A conversion "help", of course - but the timer recording should still work OK. I don't use the TVGOS with my E85H/CM-7000, and it works fine. Don't see why it would be any different with the EH55.

If you're referring to the analog time going away, as long as you have manual time setting you should be OK, unless your units have problems keeping accurate time that way.

I know you don't use it that way much, but if you ever have problems with B to B settings with the ES-30v and the Zenith, just set it to record the two shows straight through consecutively, instead of splitting them up (as I know you mean recording from the same channel - since there's no way to change them on the Zenith in your setup).

(By the way, it's been reported in the CECB forum that one of the APEX boxes - I think maybe the 502 - can be set to change channels on it's own through the guide, similar to the way the Samsung DTB-H260F can. It hasn't been reported if it's at all dependable, though. We already know the Samsung isn't - because if the grid block says "No Information", you can't set it to change to it. Don't know if the Apex is the same. So that's at least 3 CECB's with the potential for changing channels on it's own, even though only one has proven to be dependable enough - the Zinwell. Forget about the DTVPal - it sucks all-around. Just thought I'd mention that for anyone who might be interested in this forum that doesn't really follow that stuff over there.)

Yes I was talking about the TVGOS working after 2/09. Of course I could still do manual events but I really like how the TVGOS auto titles the titles. As for the time I use auto set now and it works great but that too would be easy enough to do manually if I had to.
I just don't know what would be so magical about the DTVPal that it could convert the analog TVGOS to digital when something like my CM-7000 could not.
I guess if I had to I'd spend $40(to get a Pal) to keep my TVGOS working I would, but I'd still want to record from the CM. The Pal would only get me the TVGOS info. Not sure if that would work and if it wouldn't then I guess I'd just have to resort to manual events. From what I've read I don't think I'd be satisfied recording from the Pal.

Seem to have a solution for the back-to-back recording problem

With the help of an Ace at Panasonic support, it looks like I've got a solution to the problem of the EH55 tuning to the wrong channel on back-to-back recordings. Example - a command for ch24 will issue 242 (cable box will go to that wrong channel) then issue channel command 4. You land on ch4 instead of 24 because the EH55 issued the command twice without an "enter"

During the original set-up I selected change channels as "28 and enter" Yes the system should not be issuing the command (#'s) twice but the wrinkle would get resolved if it only issued a "enter" as instructed, but on back-to-back recordings it does not.

Now to revisit the set-up process, at a certain point during the set-up the EH55 knowing that I'm on Time-Warner with a Scientific Atlanta box defaults to remote code 009 - which turns out to be ok for regular channel changing but not the back-to-back recordings. So after the EH55 confirms with you its choice as 009 as the remote code you say "no" and it auto-increments up to the next valid Scientific Atlanta remote code, in this case 1878.

I tried this code 1878 (Scientific Atlanta) instead of default 009 and it works - still get the silly double command on back-to-back recordings BUT the Enter *works* and gets us to the right channel despite the channel command being issued twice.

tscheer, Essex502 and sggoodri also wrote up this problem, I hope they see this post.

Any idea on how to get the enter command for a CM-7000 CECB? Currently I'm using code 145 which is (Pioneer) and everything works great except B2B events don't work well, like you noted because of the lack of the enter command.

My DMR-EH55 started behaving badly last week. I ended up using the "hold channel UP and DOWN together for 7 seconds" to restore the unit and wipe it clean (power cycling did not help). One week later, it hung again with the exact same symptoms:

I cannot change channels.
I can watch recorded programs, but I cannot delete them.
When I power off the unit, there is no usual "click" sound when the HD spins down.

This time, I left it alone. About 7 hours later, I turned it on, and it was all well again, and I was able to delete the recordings.

The only thing in common with the previous failure and this one was that the DVR was tuned to the same channel (not the host channel). This channel does provide TVGOS data, though. I read in the Sony DHG-HDD250/500 AVS thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...o#post14897745) of others having similar bad behavior problems with their Sony recorders when tuned to this same station. I'm thinking perhaps there is something incompatible with the TVGOS data on this channel (which my DVR should not be using) and the FW version in my DVR (09.02.27/09.06.07/00.00.00/000/08000A00/73/0000).

Has anyone else seen this behavior?

I do not have the lockup problem with my EH55, but it does appear that DirecTV's TV Guide Channel (Channel 237, and my host Channel) is no longer carrying the analog TVGOS signal. Of course a call to DirecTV ("What's TVGOS?") was not helpful. A call to Panasonic was a bit more helpful, in that they said they'd had a lot of such calls recently.

My EH55 has Version 9 TVGOS firmware, so should be able to receive the digital version of TVGOS if and when Panasonic gives us all a new update to handle it. What we don't know, of course, is whether DirecTV will carry a CBS affiliate with TVGOS.

My DirecTV 10-300 receiver worked fine with the EH55 for 2 years, and the OTA route via antenna was never needed before, so I'm loath to hook up an antenna for 2-3 months just to get the analog signal a little longer.

What do you suppose will happen next?

Mine finally finished populating last night. It now goes out 7+ days. It did take 3 days to complete it but I'm glad I got it after reading the problems many are having with analog TVGOS. Mine's still coming from analog CBS.
Does anyone know in the case of Direct do they actually insert the TVGOS signal or is it just passed on from CBS? I might think Direct does because according the the manual Dish does not support TVGOS so if it was just passed on from CBS both should support TVGOS. Would it be the same with Comcast Cable, that is does each location need to manually insert TVGOS or is it again just passed on with the local CBS station?

AFAIK, the TVGOS EPG data is just passed along by the cable company with the station's signal. Since the EPG data is carried in the VBI signal (also carries closed captions), the cable company has to pass it along with the video signal.

I don't think that cable companies would be able to insert the EPG data since it requires special equipment that TVGOS provides to the host station.

By the way, my TVGOS data is currently carried by my local ABC station. In the past, it has been carried by the local CBS. FOX, PBS, and now ABC stations.

Hmmm... Let me guess, NO ONE wants it!

I've has this for2 years and the TVGOS have been working great. All of a sudden the TVGOS stopped down loading 2 weeks ago and it seems as though the unit cannot locate the host channel anymore. I have cablevision.
Anyone else having this problem??????

TVGOS problems are usually area dependent. Maybe if someone else from NYC is using it they'll chime in. It's possible your local TV channel that broadcasts TVGOS is having problems. It seems lately both analog and digital TVGOS is being carried by your local CBS station, some areas also report PBS for the analog.
You might want to try a reset of your machine to see that helps. That would be done by, after the machine is powered up, hold both the channel UP and DOWN buttons on the main unit for at least 10 seconds. The time should go back to 12:00 and you'll need to setup your machine again.
But you may as well get used to this, if you're OTA only analog TVGOS will be going away in 2 months anyway. After that all events will need to be set manually (unless they get the DTVPal CECB working)

My eh55 broke on nov 28 2008 so I sent it in for repairs, was using an RCA receiver to get direct tv for the past 2 years, was getting the EPG just fine the whole time.

In Dec we upgraded our Direct TV receiver to the opne made by Direct TV model D11.

Now on Jan 2 I got My eh55 back and have not been able to load the EPG.

I called CBS in Denver and s[poke with an engineer, he said they were still passing the EPG info stream in there broad casts, but if Direct tv wasnt passsing it on I would not get it.

I called Direct TV they said they were passing it on.

Any one else here using the receiver made by Direct TV?

Are you still getting the EPG?

I have read and reread posts here to see what I need to do.

All my connections and settings are just as before with the RCA receiver, but no guide.

I read one suggestion I will try tonight, that of using a zip code of another city, that is close by. so will see if that helps.

If anyone has been using the Direct TV model D11 receiver I would escpeccailly like to hear from you.

But I welcome suggestions from anyone. Thanks Bruce

Not sure if this is related but someone else using direct TV is also having TVGOS problems, though he lives in FL.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...9#post15461479

Hey Jeff thanks for the reply, I had read that post and it was one of 2 that suggested trying a zip code located near the braodcasters area.

I did this after my last post, and my eh55 is changing channels for the first time since I got my unit back last week, if I get the guide up I will post back and let al know. Thanks Again!

I'm sorry to say after sending my EH55 in to have the hard drive replaced I still get aborted recordings (see my original below, followed by Jay's). I don't remember the post but that was suggested after I originally reformatted and reloaded firmware, without improvement. The abort doesn't happen *that* often so far. I'll just have to monitor to see if it becomes more frequent. If anyones has ideas about

It's becoming more common for my EH-55 to record (to HD) a scheduled pgm and abort after less than 10 seconds. I don't discern much of a pattern except that typically the thumbnails for the "aborts" do not show the program name - but might indicate the network. Please note that I've never filled the HD much past the 50% mark so it should not be terribly fragmented. I called Panansonic and they were not familiar with this problem and suggested a reformat.
Thanks,

Paul


jay214128
I have always had this problem with the EH55 (see post #666 in this thread). If you check the recording history it will probably indicate xHost for the recording status. I have never been able to prevent this problem, it just happens randomly. I have deleted all programs from the HD, updated the FW, and reset and rebooted, but nothing makes it go away. It is just a bug in the EH55 FW. My resolution is to record shows on multiple recorders from multiple stations. This provides backups for DVR failures and station screw ups.

I own the dmr-eh55, and during the bowl season where i resord every game and my unit is on most of the time, i lost my EPG, and i have had a DEVIL of a time reloading it back up, instead of cable without a box, i am trying using the ir blaster and my comcast cable box here in the detroit area

Has anyone else in detroit area had thier EPG "run out" and not been able to reload it?

One thing i know i have to do is give the unit the 24 straight hours of no touchy...its so hard to do for me,

Also, while i am at it, can i have cable without a box come in via my rf input and my cable with a box enter via the IN3 inpout

Thanks in advance for any info you guys may have for me.

I'm not a motor city guy so I can't answer your question but I don't really believe what they say about the 24hr. waiting.
I never turned mine off for more than overnight and my guide started populating. What I did notice if using the IR blaster was that when the unit was turned on it stopped scanning for channels. As soon as the unit was turned off it started back right where it left off. That is if it left off on channel 450 when you turned it back off it would continue on channel 451 and keep going up.
If left powered on it will never download TVGOS but personally I think overnight is sufficient to get the ball rolling. YMMV

I have an almost brand new DMR-EH55 bought as a demo (no IR blaster) a few months ago. Since I have 3 other Pioneer DVR's and the TVGOS doesn't work in my area, I am going to sell it. What is a reasonable price I can get for it and where is the best place to sell it? I was told Ebay and the prices range from $400 upwards. Is that reasonable?