[zabolots]

Well I had my first lock up with my 3-week old 5040. I was watching a recorded show while another live show was recording. I'm not sure if it matters, but at one point I paused the recorded show playback to view some photos that I had uploaded to the unit. A while after resuming the playback of the recorded show there was about 1/2 second of loud audio static followed by a solid magenta/purple screen. None of the buttons on the remote did anything. I had to reboot the unit by holding down the power button on the front of the unit. I then got the "Please wait..." message & a little while longer it was up and running again. I was able to continue watching the recorded show without any further problems.


Anyone else had anything similar happen? I was planning on cracking open the unit this weekend to upgrade the hard drive but now I'm not sure that I should be voiding the warranty if something might be wrong with the unit.


Scott

 

[scottamus]

Yea mine locks up all the time it seems. It mostly happens when I try to delete a show. It will go blank and lock up for 5-10 minutes then start working again. The lock up occurances seem to be proportional to the amount of free space on the disk. Did you have a lot or a little free space left? The only way I know to check is by pausing a live show and seeing the pause time remaining.


Replay has ignored the email I sent them about this.


I was planning on upgrading my disk as well but now I've got the same concerns even though a bigger disk may be the best solution for now

 

[zabolots]

I'd say that my drive is probably a little less than 1/2 full. I've never had a problem deleting a show. I almost always delete a show immediately after watching it so I've deleted quite a bit of shows without the unit locking up. I've only had this single lockup and it occurred during playback.


Overall I'm pretty satisfied with my 5040. As long as this lockup problem doesn't persist I'll be happy. However, I must admit that I'm quite concerned by the numbers of posts I read from people that have lockup problems on a very regular basis. Some people seem to have A LOT of problems with their ReplayTV units. I wonder why there seems to be such a wide variance in stability...

 

[Markz2k]

Me too. Just got a 5040 about 3 weeks ago. In addition to the poor audio quality when using the analog out connection (lots of hiss), I got a lockup a couple days ago. I was watching a show, and near the end the unit did a commercial advance. The image froze, and about 2-3 seconds of audio kept repeating. The only key on the remote that the unit would respond to was power. It would just blank the screen and mute the audio until you turn it back on. Then it would immediately start repeating the audio and showing the frozen image. It was not recording or doing anything else at the same time. The show was recorded in high-quality mode.


Fortunately, I'm within my 30 day return window. This is going back for a refund tomorrow. Nearly 10 times the cost of a VCR (with lifetime activation) and it can't even handle basic recording/playback reliably.


I had a 4504 a few months ago and had major problems getting SB to get the thing activated in a reasonable time-frame. I returned that one because about that time Amazon spilled the beans about the new 5XXX series coming at a lower price, and because of SB's horrid customer service.


At this point, I'll wait for a device that can time-shift Hi-Def programming, and continue to use my VCR's for SD. They're crude, but reliable which is more than I can say for Replay.

 

[Aztlan]

Mine also. My 5040 has locked up at least 4 times since I bought it last month. Mine is full, I will try and free up some space, maybe that will help.

 

[sfhub]

Quote:

Originally posted by zabolots Some people seem to have A LOT of problems with their ReplayTV units. I wonder why there seems to be such a wide variance in stability...

Sometimes it is just some random corruption or manufacture defect but

in my experience there are usually specific causes for most of the replay

problems, especially the ones experienced by a lot of folks. If it is

manufacture defect then your best strategy seems to be to return

the unit and get a new one. It can take a while to RMA the unit to

replay and there is no guarantee your unit will be fixed properly,

especially if you have an obscure hard to reproduce problem.


For other types of problems, it may take a while to figure out the

cause, but once you do and learn to avoid it, your Replay experience

is much better. The problems are still there, but you don't notice them

anymore, which is almost as good as a fix.


I don't have the lockup experiences you folks are experiencing on my

two 5040s, but I remember seeing them on my SS1000 (and I'm pretty

confident if I tried hard enough I could get it to happen). I noticed it

usually happened if something was recording and/or playing back high

quality. I conjectured the problem was exacerbated by the extra stress

the machine is under (menu navigation also becomes quite slow when

recording HQ) so I started recording everything standard quality. Haven't

had a lockup since. Prior to that I had swapped HDs, added cooling,

pulled my hair out, etc.


I have a current problem where my 5040s fail to see each other anymore.

I think I narrowed the problem down to a specific sequence of how I

was deleting remote shows and/or the unit going into screensaver

mode with a remote guide on screen. I don't know for sure since I

haven't tried real hard to reproduce the problem, but I've been avoiding

those scenarios and my machines have seen each other fine for a few

days now.

 

[sfhub]

Quote:

Originally posted by Markz2k Me too. Just got a 5040 about 3 weeks ago. In addition to the poor audio quality when using the analog out connection (lots of hiss),

For some reason I kept noticing a lot of hiss when I streamed a show

off a remote 5040. I couldn't understand what was going on because

the same show didn't have any hiss when played back on the remote

5040s television and this stuff is recorded and streamed as digital

data.


After some hair pulling I noticed my old Sony XBR had simulated surround

processing turned on in the audio setup. When I turned this off, the

hissing went down a lot, to the point I didn't notice it anymore. I think

the compression of audio introduces some artifacts that the simulated

surround picks up and amplifies quite a bit.


Don't know if that is what is causing your problem, maybe it is just

a cabling issue, but I figured I'd let you know my experiences in case

it helps.

 

[nineball]

I have also seen a couple of crashes with the looping audio. It looks like it might be a problem with their MPEG decoder because I can play the same shows back and don't have a problem.


I am not sure I am willing to return the product yet, but if I don't feel confident that SonicBlue will be releasing a new version of software to fix these bugs soon, I will have no choice.


There are some things I like more on the 5000 than the 4000, but the stability is not one of them.