Magnavox 537, 535, 533, 515, 513, 2160A, 2160, 2080 & Philips 3576, 3575 - Page 557

Someone made a comment here a week or two back that suggested we weren't going to be getting any new models. I figured our Funai friend had shared the bad news in an earlier post and I'd missed it.

One thing I'm reading but don't understand is why does it play HD but not record in it? Is it to save HD space cause you got to figure with the advance digital brain in this thing playing HD recording in HD would not be a big feet to handle. Got to be a jerk to make it record in standard analog guilty. Now digital cable is coming of age devices like this are becoming useless but on the other hand the higher price cable/FIOS/satellite and free Internet programing more people will be going to broadcast TV and free Internet.

Then it would make High-Speed Dubbing to DVD virtually impossible, or at least much more difficult. Remember, these units are DVD recorders, first and foremost. The recordings on the hard drive are set to match the SD DVD standard.

aren't there Blue Ray burners for the PC? You can burn a HD disc on your PC so what's the difference here? This may be stupid but will a firmwear upgrade make this able to record in 3D when they start broadcasting in it?

In comparing its functionality to my old 3576 I have been using forever, I noticed something peculiar. When in the process of HSD, once it gets to the "Writing to Disc" process, I noticed that the live signal stutters/cuts out for a split second, happens exactly twice, and it appears to occur at precisely the same %completion points during the "Writing to Disc". My 3576 never did that. Is this normal with the 515?

The Maggie does not play HD.

And there are things like DMCA and MPAA and HDCP. No company wants to market a Blu-Ray recorder in the US due to heavy-handed copyright enforcement.

My 513 and 515 both do that.

It shows TV HD channels in HD doesn't it? If so then why not record in it?

P110411_1250 This picture is my entertainment setup and been wondering were the new recorder should be placed. Can i place the Samsung blue ray player on top of it or should they be placed side by side.

As I understand it, it "passes thru" an HD signal thru the coax to the TV untouched (but amplified). It also downconverts the HD signal in the tuner to SD to record to the HDD/DVD. It then upconverts that SD recording when playing it back over component/HDMI.

I don't see heat as an issue with SSDs. I have them in two laptops and a Desktop. They run cooler than the Hard Drives they replaced in all of the computers. They run faster and Quieter too. The laptops went from usable but a little slow to pleasant to use due to the increase in speed. They are both quite a bit faster now with the SSDs than they were with the 5400RPM hard drives. Most laptops use 5400 RPM drives to give longer battery life.

Thanks, Wajo & Joe for the reassurances. Since I updated my (previously completely reliable) 2160a a little over a week ago, it has had freezes
- searching for a time signal,
- playing back a timer recording,
- recording a timer recording,
- when I pressed the power on button,
plus random appearances and disappearances of military time. I will miss the title naming and skip-a-day flag, but they really didn't do anything for me if I need to reenter my timers every day or two.

I still had the file from April 2010 that I was previously operating with, and I just installed it and reset. Everything looks normal, but time will tell.

But I noticed one thing. In the instructions from April 2010 (and in Wajo's post #8946 announcing it), it said to do a skip-654 and then insert the disc. In the new upgrade instructions, it just said to set the unit to DVD and insert the disc. Any idea why the difference/is it significant? I found the help entries on the skip codes but didn't see anything about that one.

Again, thanks for the help. I'm hoping if anyone else has similar problems, we might be able to narrow down a cause.

Appears the expected shortage of hard drives has arrived:

From Fry's Electronics website:
Current estimates indicate hard drive mfrs will need 6-8 months before they can resume normal production.

What was the size and price of the ones you use in your laptops?

They have no moving parts, thus they are quieter. They are also faster. I did not mean to paint a picture of heat being an issue, but an issue to hurdle. I should not have downplayed price, since to the consumer that is the biggest hurdle. I think that it has taken about 5 years to bring the 3Tb drives out as "externals". I suppose we will have to wait and make a better comparison when they do come out with external 3Tb Solid State Drives.

No, this is definitely an issue with the 515. Some of the material was recorded on another recorder and was fine when recorded. CC disappeared on play back on the 515. The TV has CC on live programs consistently. The 515 is hit and miss, sometimes even on the same program after a shut down and restart. Also, watching a program live via the 515 tuner, the CC always works. That pretty much narrows it down to the 515's ability to read the CC off either a disk or it's HDD.

I will definitely pay close attention to this with my new 515. While I don't use CC much, I do have it set to "on when mute" on my TV, and it's invaluable when there are times I can't make out a piece of dialog I will mute the TV and rewind to read what was said.

I have already dubbed 2 discs on the 515 since I got it yesterday. I will check those as well.

I forgot to mention that (since the upgrade last week) I'd had the clock originally to manual with an analog station (the way it had been w/no problems for the past 3 years), then to manual with a digital station (which I verified got a good time), then to OFF. It froze at least once at each setting.

The firmware I was previously running with no problems was the one that came out in April 2010 (I don't have the number right here). Then last week I upgraded to the new 2160a/513 version (because I didn't read well enough ), then immediately to the 515 version. Sorry I don't have the exact numbers right here but I hope that's enough to answer your question.

You could apply a 2160A firmware and if that "fixes" the problem, then the problem would seem to be in the firmware itself and not in the hardware.

The other effect was if you did re-install the 2160A firmware and the problem remains, is the firmware introducing the problem and "nothing" will solve it.

Well, there is the CM7000PAL with dual ATSC tuner that will record either HD or SD. Gives something like 30 hrs on HD. But the only way to get the recording out is via composite or HDMI with HDCP. There's another box I discovered, TVIX-HD M-6620N also a dual ATSC tuner but also has QAM. This thing I guess comes without HD, but has a slot and you just slide in a SATA HD formated in NTFS and it also has network connection. I didn't read in complete detail, but it seems it can store HD material in 1080i MPEG-TS format on disk, so I would think in theory it would copy over to any computer/server and you could burn it to BD. This thing is also a media server and seems to have some of the bugs with codec playback as seen on other media servers like Boxee Box.

scott s.
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It sounds like I missed the Dec 2010 firmware, which I probably didn't pay any attention to because I wasn't having any problems. I think I'll let things sit the way they are for a few days, and maybe if I feel like experimenting again, I'll try installing that, then the latest (515 version).

As for the clock, I think that's one of the settings I'm automatically going in and changing every time things get reset, so I don't think that's the issue.

Anyway, thanks for the link - I think I was getting a little confused. I'll report back if I have anything useful to add.

If all you want is a ts file creator that has HD storage or USB memory storage, go for the BV-980H. It does make me think that a hammer and chisel means word processor.

CM is supposed to release the CM-7400 in a few weeks. It also has HD storage. It could be vaporware, so we need to see what gets released. CM has a good name and it would be sad to see them put out a piece of junk.

There are some software problems with the Magnavox, but they keep trying to fix them. All cable systems are local so it must be hell to find the problems. I'm lucky to have no fatal errors. Or maybe I'm just average and those with problems are unlucky.

I wish we all had OTA reception. But too many have cable, and the lockup problems all seem to be from cable feeds. It's a big country. I hope Funai can figure out what is wrong with their software, but the odds are not good. If you can't duplicate the problem it can be tough to fix.

Meanwhile, I went to auto clock on my V2160A and it found my bad PBS channel. I set the manual clock to my other PBS channel and it found its bad clock. So far, the update hasn't done anything but make my V2160A act like a 515H. For that I am happy. Aloha.

Just got my player, came in a plan brown box and the player was wraped in bubble wrap no foam packing. Got player, instructions, cable 2 types(yellow,white,red and what looks like a type of coax), remote. Some manual, it's just paper stapled together no fancy printed color manual. batteries not included. 30 day return policy

Are we talking about the Maggies? They don't play HD. They only pass digital signals carrying HD thru to a TV that can display it.

The 2080, 2160s, 513 and 515 don't play HD. They only play what's on a DVD or on their hard drive, and the hard drive doesn't record HD, so how could it play HD back?

Did I miss something and are you talking about a different machine?


Are you talking about a Magnavox recorder? The machines being discussed in this set of forums are recorders, not players.

I'm guessing you're a total newbie to all this and the machine you just got is your first Maggie? Which model did you get?

According to his earlier post here, he apparently acquire a "refurb" MDR515 from J&R. (They often come packed the way he detailed.)