Samsung DVD-AR650 - Page 9

any word on any firmware updates???

i called samsung again today and they tell me theres no word of a new firmware for the dvd-ar650. they want me to ship the unit to california to get it serviced $30. i agreed, cuz i would love to record my DTV shows again.

i got my samsung ar650 back today. i'll let you know if they fixed the DTV tuner issue.

man, i'm starting to get real fraustrated with this dvd-ar650 dvr. it now does not read any of my dvd-rw's and when formatting the disc, it crashes the unit. the unit displays a 5 on boot up and can not write any shows anymore. i will post videos on youtube soon.

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That's a pretty nasty sound it makes when it's crashing.

Have you tried it with better media? That Office Depot house brand media is pretty crappy.

It really sounds like the laser is hitting the disc, maybe as it does it's power calibration? Do your discs look damaged at all, particularly near the center and the clear innermost spindle area. It should be crystal clear, like glass no circular scratches.
BTW I've used many of the same O.D. -RWs(in my Panasonics) any haven't had a failure yet so I wouldn't be too quick to blame the media, but I suppose it's a possibility.
Does your machine also crash with -R or RAM discs and how about just playing discs you've already finalized or commercial discs? Those discs shouldn't require burning so the laser might not need to go into the calibration area where it might be getting hung up.

i've been using those stack of office depot DVD-RW for the longest time and now all of them have the same issue even the newer ones. i've even used SONY DVD-RWs. I never had problems with the office depot DVD-RWS before till now.

Yeah, I have some of theirs, too (DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW), and I've never really had any problems with them, either, but I just thought I'd ask if you had tried anything better.

I've got two units that won't accept any type of disk. I've set those aside. I have another unit in use right now that is beginning to do the same thing. I put in a new Memorex -RW disk this morning, it went to initialize it, then spit it out. I put it back in and this time it initialized with no problem.

I've really given these things a workout in the past couple of years that the drives may be failing. I ordered a replacements from partstore.com, but those came broken (one wouldn't open the tray because a piece of the drive mechanism had fallen off and another had the laser head flopping around loose). I've pretty much given up on replacing the drives.

These were wonderful while they worked (I guess 2-3 years was a good period). It's a shame Samsung gave up on them. It's also a shame you can't get good replacement drives to keep them up and running.

I had a similiar problem with one of my recorders (a different brand) I got it to work a little while longer by cleaning the hubs that hold and spin the discs. It was like the hubs were slipping just enough to cause miss reads.....try and google instructions on how to clean the drive
I think cdfreaks had instructions on how

I had one of these recorders but I took it back years ago only because it failed to function on scheduled recordings, other then the problem of recording it was a good system but the store BB didn't have any more at the time so I bought a panasonic it's ok

Try the cleaning it might just work

I've tried cleaning--everything from using different types of cleaning disks to taking the cover off, blowing out any dust, and using alchohol swabs.

Sometimes they just wear out. And without a good company to provide workable replacements, that means the unit is no longer useful.