Magnavox 537, 535, 533, 515, 513, 2160A, 2160, 2080 & Philips 3576, 3575 - Page 683

Thanks to all for the comments and suggestions.

So far it hasn't happened again.

>problem with mag 515 writing to DVD ... try calibration process to ensure that's eliminated...
Am unfamiliar with any manual DVD-burn calibration process. Can't seem to find a reference to it in the wajo collection.
If just a SKIP 079, HDD and DVD OK. (and wow 5000 hrs on...)

> try setting [playback] on PCM rather than Stream.
> try running thru the content on the HDD and listen carefully
Interesting. Will try if it happens again. Unfortunately I needed the HDD space, so the title in question had to be deleted.

>try a direct dub
Direct dub was fine (that's what I meant by "regular dub").

Hi rxheaven,

I remember working with you on your first pass through this "at-the-time" OT subject . I've been VERY occupied with my new 'Toys' - Hauppauge PVR-1212 and assorted 'Chinese Converters', but I've been LURKing during my 'breaks' and I've accumulated a few points I'd like to inject:

• AGC: Let's say that you're relaxing in your BarcaLounger, listening to classical music at a relatively low volume when, all of a sudden, your maid pops through the door with the Dyson . Although the classic music is still playing, you can no longer hear it because the 'Noise Level' in the room has risen.
  .
• I don't see how the FM Trap can impact your UHF problems. FM, 88-108MHz, is between VHF Channels 6 & 7. To track / locate harmonics to chose 'Notch Filters', GOOGLE for a chart relating "Channel Number to Frequency". Start with the frequency of your "Problem Channel" and build a simple Excel spreadsheet with "Divide by 2,4,8,etc..." and 'Multiply by 2,4,8,etc..." columns. IMO, that's where you want to look for any possible interference. As for rkg22's idea of 'something' else in the house causing the problem, you can troubleshoot this the way we troubleshoot X-10:
  .
  1. Turn off ALL the breakers except the one with the Mag DVDR.
  2. Unplug everything except the Mag DVDR from that circuit.
  3. What happens?
  .
• If I understand this correctly, the 'green' that rkg22 refers to is the the copper shield under the plastic / vinyl jacket - difficult to see without cutting the jacket. My further understanding is that the corrosion / 'green' is removing some of the copper shielding, allowing noise to enter - like the green corrosion on my copper water and copper baseboard heat is producing random pinholes that I have to patch. Since you system worked 'sorta' fine a few months ago, and it's mainly the Mag DVDR tuner giving you grief now, I like the idea of putting a potentiometer into the AGC circuit, ESPECIALLY based on your results with the Mag DVDR plugged in to AC and then not (i.e. REVERSED).
  .
• Another thing that bothers me that no one else has commented on is the fact that your channels don't clear with an 'Auto-Scan' with the coax disconnected . Short of building yourself a Faraday Cage, I don't see how this is happening. Try an 'Auto-Scan' with a 75 ohm resistor in an F-Connector between center and ground.

Good Luck!

I'm heading back to my 'Toys'...

Two comments if I may.

I terminate all F-type input connectors. If you don't want to buy the terminators, at least wrap the female end with foil. Because:

I have done some recent restoring of data from a VHS tape. The rf channel 3 output was used. While I expected data on channel 3, I also had data on channels 2, 4, 5 and 6. I guess I have a lot of cable leakage in my area. The closest house is over 100' away, so the leakage is probably mine even though all my in-house parts are new, the main cable (above ground) is much closer.

You have a lot of good ideas.

Hi again everyone. So many good ideas indeed.

To avoid confusion, I just want to specify: when I did the auto-scan with cable unplugged, it did erase the channel list, but it didn't help with the initial issue at all.

But, after I left the Mag unplugged from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, with HDMI and RF cable unplugged to (Mag completely isolated from the World), when I plugged it back, only the clock had reset, I hadn't even lost the options like "make recording compatible" to ON and "HDMI fun link" to ON as well.

Hence my comment "how in the World am I supposed to reset this darn unit?".

Also, about the FM trap, I don't know how it makes a difference, but it does. Again, hard to understand how FM frequencies could influence UHF band channels, but then again, hard to understand how UHF 32 and 43 (real channels, not PSIP id's) could be influenced when the closest local channels are 29 and 35, and these are the weakest local channels, the strongest being VHF 10 and 12, and UHF 19, 21 and 27. There are also 15 and 49 but also weaker. Anyway, strong or not, none are close to or adjacent to 32 and 43.

So, what's adding noise? I don't know. But as JoeKustra said, I sure have a lot of ideas to cover from the wonderful community here

I have a crazy question.

Based on posts that indicate that, in most cases, when a TV is connected to the antenna out, rather than the sharing the antenna feed or even connected to the antenna directly, TVs often indicate a higher signal strength, I assume there is broadband pre-amp between the antenna in and antenna out. I would also assume that this pre-amp feeds the dvdr tuner circuitry.

I believe that rxheaven indicated that his TV reported a stronger signal with a split antenna feed vs using antenna out. I suppose that could be because the pre-amp is noisy, and the TV is reporting S/N ratio.

Is there any chance that the pre-amp is variable gain, and that when strong signals are somehow detected by the gain control circuitry, the gain of the pre-amp is reduced, maybe even to a loss, to avoid overdriving downstream circuitry, for the entire RF spectrum?

That would explain a weaker signal on antenna out and trouble for the tuner when trying to recover the relatively weak signals.

Just a thought.

Like many of you, I have a variety of DVDR's in my stable. In addition to V2160A, V513 and 515, I have Panny EH50 and EH55 and Pioneer 810. A while back, I moved exclusively to TY DVD-R 8x Premium discs for permanent copies, which seems to make all my kids happy.

Before I had the Mags, I used DVD-RAM discs for temporary storage and to move stuff between the Panny's. But as I find myself using the Mags more and more, I need to invest in R/W discs for this purpose. So my question to those of you who have both Panny and Mag DVDR's is this: what R/W discs do you find most successful for use across both brands of DVDR's? Both in format (+ or -), brand, and speed? I'm hoping there's a particular -R/W that works for you, as that might be compatible with the Pio as well. I'd appreciate any feedback from your real-world experiences.

Thanks,
Torgy

For starters, I'd suggest you use the term "RW" if you're talking about reusable discs. That's the accepted term, and it's what everyone will understand.

In my personal experience, I've used Sony RW discs and have had no complaints.

I suppose if you could find some TY/JVC RW discs, they might be worth a try, since TY's have always seemed to be the best with regards to -Rs.

I've used Verbatim Data Life Plus +RW and Maxell -RW without any problems between my two 515s. However, my old Panny can't use +RW. The Maxells work fine.

Something I've noticed is that the RWs last much longer with the Mags. The Panny used to run through a -RW after perhaps 30 reformats. It would suddenly be unable to format. With the Mags, they have lasted several times longer and are still working. I don't reformat them, just erase the titles.

If you dig back through this megathread you may see I've reported multiple times much trouble with Sony DVD+RW in my 515, but no trouble with them in my other 4 Funais, and no trouble with any brand of DVD-RW in the 515 (or any other of my recorders). I haven't noticed whether the only Panny I ever use cares about disc brand. It doesn't get used much since I acquired the HD recorders. However, depending on how you plan to use the discs you write on the Mags, +RW may be a better choice at least for some purposes. My Pioneer preserves title info from Funai +RW discs when dubbing to its HD, but not when dubbing from -RW. Transferring recordings among non-sibling machines is modestly faster using +RW, because the finalizing step is not applicable.

FWIW, TY 8X DVD-R discs are not infallible, just the best I know about. One of my Pioneers often will claim "unable to complete recording" on the very same disc the other Pioneer has no problem writing the exact same recordings to after making a HS dub between the two Pioneers using VR mode and a -RW disc to do the dub. The fussy Pioneer has no problem writing reliably to any old brand of -RW discs. Failure to write on the fussy is very common when I try to use any DVD-R other than TY 8X.

Highest HSD failure rate I've experienced is a tie between Philips and TDK CMC MAG AM3 16X DVD-R, with Imation RITEKF1 16X DVD-R close behind. I have yet to write a DVD+R that wasn't a DL, which I've only ever burned in a PC. Last experienced failure of any of my machines to recognize a disc made at least 2-3 years ago is from a Maxell 16X DVD-R, most likely another ubiquitous CMC MAG AM3. The JVC 16X DVD-Rs I was able to get 200 of a while back were clearly the best next to the 8X TYs.

hi ken....

this is a good piece of input, as i had not thought of the front end preamp that might be inside these tuner modules...

i have not opened up one of the modules, nor have i seen their schematics ( the tuner module is only shown as the ' module ' in the service manuals for these ).. i do know that the module is either made by toshiba, or is at least used in toshiba and other consumer equipment, as it comes up as a replacement for several machines... i have yet to locate any schematic for the device... OT, here, but the reason i was hunting was actually to maybe locate a different ( but pin and functionally compatible ) module that would eliminate the tuner's propensity for lousy black levels...

anyway, i know that someone pointed out way early on ( possibly wajo ) that these things did have some sort of gain stage in the tuner modules.

my guess, however ( and i could certainly be wrong ), is that the powered stage between ant-in and the rest of the mess ( including ant-out ) would more likely be implemented in there as a ' buffer ' stage ( for loading purposes ) and happens to have a bit of gain... well, if 4dB is a correct figure, technically that's a LOT of gain, since 3dB implements power doubling...

adding 3dB to a line level input for an audio device would probably rail an audio power amp running at hi dynamic levels ( alas i love to listen to tunes at as ' live ' level as possible, much to my wife's dismay ) ...

still, the culprit might indeed be something even more rudimentary, like a fixed stage being driven out of linear range, thereby causing loss of weak signals altogether, and weakening of those signals that are stronger, though maybe not affecting them seriously...

in any case, though, any of these possibilities don't really help out with our friend's problem, since fixes to those kinds of things really does represent a higher-tech solution, like tearing into the tuner module to have a look-see, or doing some board level mods to get the thing to maybe handle AGC overload...

in real life, our poor friend needs to borrow a service monitor from a local service shop and have a real look at what's hitting his antenna in ' sprectrum analyzer ' mode, and then address the outside world accordingly...

i feel that his best bet is still to invest in some attenuators and do a trial and error attenuation to see if he can pull the weak stuff out without hurting S/N on the other stronger signals...

oh, by the way folks, the FM trap CAN improve things by first, lowering the noise floor in the FM broadcast section and also reducing strong signal levels in that band that might hit any broadband amp downstream. it might also reduce any locally generated harmonics that might be playing havoc...

of course, these are ALL shots in the dark, so i feel our friend's pain...

rgds,
ron g

That's exactly how I feel. I've receive a TON of great hints/ideas from each of you, but I'm still a bit at a loss.

Some simple things like checking DC in the line etc, I can do without too much hassle, but some of the more high-tech stuff I can't even imagine pulling off.

And to think, only a few weeks ago, before I went "pre-amp" I had been getting WETK (PBS) just fine on both Maggys. I don't know how an improved, more stable signal is now being refused by both.

I went for this pre-amp model because it's known for its great quality and very low noise figures. I beleive it's less than 2 db noise, but a nice 23db gain on UHF and I think 17 on VHF.

I wish I wasn't such a huge football fan, than I wouldn't care so much about getting WFFF (FOX).

"Endangered Species" (sadly)

The failure of DVD-RW starts much earlier than can be detected on these DVD recorders because they don't verify the burn against the source. In my earlier years I went through a lot of DVD-RW. I typically did full disk image burns on a PC followed by a verify cycle -- I put Sharpie marks on each -RW to count how many burns it had gone through. What I found is that after 15-20 burns the -RW would start to fail the verify cycle. It still burned without issue and without an error, but it failed the verify. Once it reported a failed verify, there was no turning back -- the -RW was toast. To test, I tried repeatedly re-burning the image or burning a different image to the disks and the verify errors only persisted and got worse.

And through all of this, the actual erase/burn process never failed or issued an error.

I never kept a DVD-RW disk around long enough to see if it would eventually fail during the burn cycle. I bought them in bulk packs and tossed them as soon as the verify errors started. The errors generally started around 15-20 burns. So by the time you hit the point where the disk won't format, it's a pretty bad disk and has been for a while.

Ditto on Sony RW, seem to be very good quality.

I should be careful and say I use Sony DVD+RW disc in my 515's with no problem. I burn in one unit to the disc, use the disc in another 515 to watch the content in a different room and then usually delete the content and reuse the disc later.

I know I've asked this here before, but rather than go digging thru old posts trying to find the reply/ies...

I finally upgraded my 513 with the 515-like software and all appears to be well.

Now comes the hard drive upgrade.

Would a Western Digital hard drive, say a "Caviar Blue" model, be a good choice?

I suppose Wajo's got something about this, SOMEWHERE in the opening posts of the thread...

There are 20 posts on changing the HDD. You could start at post #1 or:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...9&postcount=39

I think you need to ask yourself: is it worth the effort? I moved my 2160A to 500Gb. You might analyze your use and see if the added storage is worth the time and effort. I don't archive, but do record a season of a show. It's a personal thing.

I just realized I had 6 Maggy's would that be considered excessive??
And if I wanted to buy another Refurb should it come up,
would you consider that greedy???
At the end of the world I intend to barter them for Gorgeous Women.
So that's my rationalization.......
Mickboy

For information, following appeared in a The Wall Street Journal article today:


Perhaps we'll see some good HDD sales soon.

That's encouraging. The 2TB disks I follow haven't budged in a long time.

I thought I did a lot of time shifting, however, 6 Maggy's has me beat. I do not think that 6 or 7 is greedy, but let us know how the Gorgeous Women thing works out.

I only have 5 Mags, but I also have 2 Pioneers, plus two satellite receivers with 1G HD storage each. Such things are not infallible, so extras make good sense as insurance against dwindling availability if nothing else, besides bartering for whatever fancies.

Well that's a new one I haven't heard. I suspect you will only get women of walmart with limited functionality.

This is almost totally off topic, but considering we got onto drive replacing...

Is there such a thing as an adapter cable that will let you use a 2.5 (laptop size) drive where a full sized (3.5?) drive was meant to be used?

I'm talking SATA drives in both cases, of course.

(I know there's also the matter of something to lock the smaller drive in place, but that comes later.)

Second question, a little less related-

Is there an adapter cable that will let you use SATA drives in machines (computers, recorders, whatever) meant to use IDE (or PATA?) drives?

I seem to recall something about that in the earliest discussions of upgrading our recorders.

(I may try to use my PC to clone a SATA laptop drive to one with greater capacity. Heard it works better if you do it in a PC, two or more internal drive connectors and all.)

Before I lost all my equipment, I had

an older Philips with no digital tuner, but hard drive and DVD drive. (Used a DTVPal with it and an antenna.) Also had
two 3576s,
a 2080,
a 2160 and
a 2160a,
all at the same time.

Couldn't justify getting another. Then they were all gone.

Now have two 515s and the 513 I'm trying to turn into one.

+1

.

hi gastrof -

not OT at all...

If you have a mag 513 or 515 with existing SATA, you SHOULD be able to snap a 2.5 inch SATA laptop right in. the SATA connectors for these are actually the same as 3.5 inch drives...

If you have an older mag, or philips 357x series, using PATA drives, you can order up the Mag 513 SATA adapter board and connect it right up to the original ribbon that was connected to the original PATA board...

one note here. when switching from PATA to SATA using the adapter board, you'll need to add +5v and ground connections to the SATA adapter board as outlined in the hi-tech thread here, where i simply added a power socket that's compatible with the power plug that the PATA machines use to power the drive...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6#post21709326

also, i believe that various folks sell 3.5 inch drive frames for mounting 2.5 inch laptop drives into...

rgds,
ron g

hi gastrof...

oh well... i typed before i absorbed...

on a PC with SATA connections, a laptop drive will snap right in and run...
same as 3.5 inch versions....

on a PC with IDE connections, you will need to use some sort of adapter that accepts IDE PATA input and produces SATA output. there are several of these made out there, and they're relatively inexpensive.

an alternative, again for a PC with only IDE PATA interface, there are several PCI cards that can be plugged into your motherboard and make 1,2, or more SATA interfaces available. there are also simple adapter cables to implement the ' power portion ' of the SATA connector such that you use a standard IDE drive's power connector from power supply to the drive...

finally, you can also go the route of using a USB to SATA interface, although i don't really care for these unless i'm implementing some sort of portable drive situation...

hope this helps.

rgds,
ron g

I only have 5. If I were still on cable I could use a couple more but I'm OTA now.

1. CBS
2. NBC
3. ABC
4. FOX
5. CW/PBS