Magnavox 537, 535, 533, 515, 513, 2160A, 2160, 2080 & Philips 3576, 3575 - Page 226

My experience is different that the others here. When I started buying DVD players, I bought Toshiba and Sony, they both died withing months of their warrantees expiring. I figured that DVD technology was just a fragile technology so I bought the cheaper players. To my chagrine, they wouldn't die. I would wait and wait for one to die so I could upgrade, finally, I would just buy and replace a functioning player. I have a six year old philips in the basement that has been used daily for 6 years. I have several other no names on a shelf that still work. There are two $40 players in the kids rooms that play at least 10 hours a day that are a couple of years old and still going strong.

Personally, I would get a $40 Philips at Walmart. They play everything you through at it and I've never had one die. On the other hand, my 2160 is the only DVD player in our main room we use it as our DVD player. I don't know what I would replace it with if it broke but I don't worry about it.

Well, both my J&R refurb 2160a's are going back to J&R. One unit will not scan any channels or tune manually installed channels and the other one's clock runs really really fast in short period of time. 1st time ever having problems with refurbs but just think I will buy another one new. Would have been nice to save the $.

Can anyone confirm this: only 3575 and 3576 are able to play SVCD. The newer Magnavox H2160A has taken away SVCD from the play list.

I asked because I used to archive my favorite TV shows on SVCD so I have an extensive collection of SVCDs. Now I have to worry about stocking SVCD players for next 20 years.

I have an H2160A. It cannot play SVCD.

I'd suggest playing the SVCDs into your Philips machines, then reburning them as DVDs.

I did this with some VCDs I'd made quite a while back. (Before getting my first DVD recorder I had a stand-alone VCD machine.) The results were fine.

Check the instructions that came with your desktop.

My HP laptop has S-video output, but to get it going you have to cycle thru some monitor-related settings. These changes can be managed by buttons and keys already on the keyboard. Nothing you have to go to a window for.

Using it I've been able to play some stuff directly from the computer into my DVD recorder, record to the hard drive, and then burn to DVD.

The audio connection is a bit hinky, tho'. An adapter was needed to pipe the headphone output into twin RCA audio cables to feed the DVD recorder, and it picks up a bit of noise/hum, apparently due to the laptop using an external power block. (My battery is so shot it only lasts a few seconds now, but when the power plug is pulled, before the computer goes dead the hum does disappear from the audio feed to the recorder.)

You should be able to do this if you just find out how your computer makes the S-video feed active.

What type of computer is it?

Now that you've mentioned the Philips DVD player, I still have my first generation model DVD-825AT that has a manufacture date of July 1999, but I got it in November when company bonuses were paid out. It was $279? at Target. It still works perfectly and I use it with my 3D system and AR wireless surround headphones. The 3D system only works with CRTs so it's offline from the main A/V system. I originally bought it because it has these top-of-the-line features:

NTSC/PAL
Super Suspension (isolation from bumps)
Dual laser pickups-one optimized for DVD, the other for CD
DTS decoder
SRS TruSurround
Front Headphone Jack w/independent volume control (the ONLY one I've ever seen with this feature)
Optical digital output
Coaxial digital output
S-Video output
Composite A/V output (2 sets!)

Additional description and photo at this link: http://cgi.ebay.com/Nice-Used-Philip...3286.m20.l1116

Chris, according to my manual, E1 is the rear input, and it has to be setup to use the S-video as source. You might want to confirm that the S-video input is indeed active on the 3575. I have used this for streaming Netflix movies from my Compaq laptop.

From page 51 of the manual: General Setting>Video>Video Input. You will see a toggle there for Video/S-Video.

Sorry to hear you're having problems with the refurbs. Mine LOOKS good - seemed new, except the remote seems a little slow. I'm setting it up now. OK for analog stations but having a little trouble with the auto preset so I'm doing it again. Also I need to check how I've connected things, cause I want to do cable box in and cant find it L1, 2, and I assume 3 is the DV input. The external DVD recorder is showing up but the cablebox and digital channels are not. User error, I'm betting... I have to shift over to svideo input in menu. Will be back iwth a report. Looks good physically, nothing on the HD, and ... auto presetting now. They must have sprayed it with "new car" smell - seems fresh as a daisy. We shall see... Manual clock set, daylight savings off ... just discovered the additional input on the front, so I may only hook that up for dubbing sessions. Will be back later w/ the verdict. ....

OK, that's what it needed -- I had to change to SVIDEO for the input in the menu before the cable box would show up. Wow -- happy (so far) and ... I still have more stuff to plug in. The only odd thing is the HDMI from the 2160 responded to the remote control for the panny EA 38 and swapped channels. Guess the input selection via HDMI is overlapping somehow. I may switch OUT from one of them (maybe the Mag) to component. Will I lose any 'upconversion by doing so? I'm thinking it may be better if I'm playing commercial DVDs. For now, I have to experiment - not sure the in/outs are right, but tv check, mag check cable box check, dvd /vhs combo .. check (at least it was working before I changed everything else.

BINGO! The retuning of the digital seems to have fixed it. All there (including the evil twin channel 22 that brings in both MHz (international channels AND Md. Public television. How strange. I think this tuner may be better than the other one...

Now on to the cable box. So far, ok .... no audio -- duh. SVideo needs audio cables, too. So I guess I can't go out compnent AND svideo until I get an audio splitter out from 2160. I think this way I will be able to record off cable box to DVD recorder and use the 2160 tuner to get a different station via 2160a (and the tv to watch a third?) Cant envision when that's gonna happen, but nice to know we can!

I'm happy so far ... will try 2160 dvd player recorder tonight. HDD recording looked good ... I just discovered the HDMI settings by multiple clicking .... that changes the output from the HD?

I need to go back and search for the code to see how long this was used.... just curious. Think I dodged a bullet, but dont want to jump to conclusions til testing is done.

Once more ... thanks everybody!

coincidence? Set up the box to 2160a, and to DVD recorder -- now 'on demand' no longer works, a message said to yank the cable box power cord, now it's resetting. Any reason connecting the way I've mentioned (svideo to 2160, HDMI ) might kill it? I used to be able to record on demand content to my panny dvd recorder. Is it burping on the 2160?

Moto DCH 3200 + 2160 = ?? Channels are coming back now on comcast box -- but NO GUIDE. we shall see. Maybe I missed something or activated some copy protection switch? (HDMI vs component, maybe?) or perhaps using the 2160 passthrough vs direct cable connection triggered this? Any ideas?

progressive scan is off, thanks.

Update -- I moved the coax directly to the Moto comcast box and the channel line up is coming back. Hmmm.. may need to use a splitter instead of passthrough.

will try setting it up again the preferred way once it loads completely to see if I can stabilize the channel listings while the moto STB is getting passthough from 2160a, vs direct coax in.

OnDemand is back too.... hmmmm....

update 2 -- seems to be ok using a splitter (on an already split coax) vs passthrough of 2160. Will try agai, just to confirm the problem -- but prob wont have a chance til later tonight. might have been a coincidence of timing -- or not.... will report back when I know more...

Isn't the 2160a supposed to have auto clock set using a digital channel?
I've had mine setup since last night with autoclock ON but it's still just --:--
Does every market have a channel that broadcasts the digital time signal? For analog in my area it was PBS channel 17. For digital TVGOS it's CBS but I don't know if they also send the clock set signal which I assume is different than TVGOS's time signal.

My replacement drive is working just fine, I brought it in on 9/7 and got it back 9/30. The drive sounds a little odd when moving in or out but maybe it's just not what I'm used to. The burning works fine and I'm assuming mine has the finalizing bug but I won't be able to test until I've got my clock set. If it won't work with auto set I'll just have to set it manually.
I can hear the fan start and stop on occasion(even though it's turned off), which I'm thinking is the unit looking for the time set signal.

No.

In my market PBS was broadcasting the signal but stopped doing so when they switched to digital.

The fan will come on and there will be a partial boot up (with a couple of clicks) at noon and midnight if the auto clock is set to ON. The front panel display will not show any activity.

That did the trick, by 11:59 I had the correct time using FOX9 digital. I wonder why it didn't find it by itself? None the less it's working now and dead on according to my Casio watch with Wave Ceptor that automatically adjusts every morning at 4am.
Wajo, I was able to follow your detailed instructions on the 11:57 trick but I do have one suggestion that kind of threw me off. I quote from your directions part 4:

Enter your local FOX analog or digital (2160 only) channel number in the "Set Channel No." box. Press OK and turn DVDR off.

Well I turned my 2160a off after your last sentence but the next paragraph said:

2160 only: The 2160 can search either an ANALOG or a DIGITAL channel for a time signal. The 2160 has TWO fields, the "Set Channel No." box like on the 3575/3576, plus a box at the left that shows "CH" (analog) as a default. If you leave it on "CH," you should enter a FOX ANALOG channel. If you arrow left to the "CH" box, then up or down arrow to change it to "DTV," you should enter a DIGITAL FOX channel... major channel number only cuz it searches that channel group. Atter selecting a channel number, press OK. If you entered a digital channel, a Time Zone (TZ) menu will pop up for you to select your TZ. Press OK after entering the channel number and time zone (for digital only), then turn DVDR off.

Might I suggest a parentheses() after Press OK and turn DVDR off. and in the parentheses it would say (except 2160). Then the natural though(for me anyway) would be to read on to the next line where you explain about the digital vs. analog time set signal.
I guess I'm the type that reads only one line at a time, and when I was told to turn the DVDR off, that's what I did. Then I had to turn it back on to change it to DTV. Of course in the end everything worked well, it's just it took me a couple extra steps.



Although since I hadn't set the time prior it seemed like the fan was starting up every 10 minutes looking for the time. Although thinking about it now the HDD didn't actually spin up, like it did during Wajo's 11:57 trick, so who knows why just the fan(which is really quite quiet) was starting. Since the fan is so quiet the only way I could tell it was really the fan was to hold my hand over the exhaust and the pitch would change. It would only run for a minute or so and then go off. Since we've started winter in MN the room temp is only 64 degrees so I don't think it was starting on a thermal switch.

So how long did it take for other owners of the 3575 to figure out why their players were waking them up in the middle of the night starting some night in June.

It was about Augast before I figured out what was going on.

On-demand requires a two way passthrough. The 2160 is only one way, so if you want on-demand, then the STB has to be first in line on the coax.

ah, good to know, thanks! That saves me trying to revise it again, I will just use the signal splitter to divide the coax between the STB and the 2160. The signal does not seem to be degrading by the multiple division. Might try using the 2160 to go out to VCR via antenna so that I can tune some of the leftover analog signals in a pinch, but probably not needed.

Oh, one thing I noticed on the refurb I got -- the coax they included was much better quality and much more sturdy than the flimsy one that came in the 'new' box from W that I got last week. Otherwise it seems new(ish). Mine has a MAY production date, whereas my new one was June.

I know I read somewhere that you can test to see how long it was used... may give that a try. Will backtrack through the docs and see if I can find that. I'm betting not much....

wow -- SKIP 079 shows 3 hours power on -- and I had it on for at least two hours earlier today. It really was 'newish' unless they rolled back the odometer!

Good idea, in fact I initially used 11:55 because I wanted to give myself a cushion, after my premature turn off I had to go back and change the time back a little. I like the order now, 11:57 should work just fine even for the slowest of us
It's also nice how you gave us OTA people a special line, nothing really on analog OTA anymore(except for LPS and translators).

Artwire, at least on my 2160a after you push V.SKIP you need to immediately push say 321
If you delay in the least after pushing V.SKIP it will try and take you to a channel number. I thought I read somewhere we had something like 3 seconds following the SKIP key, but I found out you want to do this as fast as possible.
I have 0:00 DVD-WR, 4:03 DVD-RD and 0:00 for CD using SKIP 321.
For SKIP 079 I have 215 hrs for HDD on.

I started out having my 2160 set up first in line before my STB (per wajo's manual). I never order PPV movies or events. Then, Time Warner started offering some pretty good free On Demand content in my area (even some free HD movies!). At that point, I had to switch to using a signal splitter just as you are doing. I've been hooked up that way for several months and I haven't had any problems with signal strength.

Here were the stats on my Aug 2008 RH2160MW9 J&R refurb:


I bet someone bought this, looked at the owner's manual briefly, decided it was WAY too complicated to learn how to use, and returned it.

Notice I even had the same reaction you did (rolled back odometer). Auskck, one of our resident hard disk drive pioneers, responded: "Funai can not reset the hours on the HDD information is held on the HDD FW"

He's right.

Great info - skip 079 was 3 hrs HDD on
and SKIP 123 was Time DVD -WR 0.00
Time DVD RD 0:39
Time CD 0.00

I think you're right about the 'one look at the manual' idea -- it is a little intimidating, I suppose. Meanwhile, this is like adopting a rescue puppy ... more fun, maybe! Thanks, guys

That's a better idea... By putting the STB and the 2160 'in-line', you lose the use of the 2160's excellent tuner (I assume you get some QAM channels 'in the clear'). If you don't then it doesn't matter.