Hi Colin,
Re. the older Humax's, I think they were just designed and built better. Also expectations weren't as great, hard-drives smaller and more reliable, often with a 3 or 5 year guarantee, 80GB on the 8000T and 160GB (I think, although I swapped it almost immediately for a larger) on a 9200.
I'm not personally aware of the psu issue, only what I've read. I've experience of swapping out capacitors on other power supplies though, it's more common than you'd imagine, manufacturers in the supply chain cutting costs, we've seen it with batteries, sanyo and sony with their li-ion, more recently Honda with airbags etc. etc. the list goes on and on and on.
Humax will guarantee their own badged products for 2 years, in the States 90 days is common, in Europe up to 6 years depending upon price paid. One of the links linked to an upgraded dtr-t1000 with better capacitors, better hdmi etc. etc. all in for £599, I'd expect 6 years warranty for that, minimum 2 years on a MRP £249 consumer product is about right, although we'd all expect it to last longer.
We can see why Humax has moved to external psu's. No manufacturer will shoot themselves in the foot and openly admit problems. Quite often it'll be a supplier further down the line supplying a substandard component that may not become apparent for months/years.
Topfield, digihome, vestel (incl. all those brands you want to forget) and Thomson/Sky etc. etc. have had more than their fair share of psu capacitor problems.
If it's got a BT badge on it then BT got these at a reduced price and made themselves responsible. BT badged boxes are normally cheaper and this is the price you pay for the bargain.
I'm not aware of a tutorial, only the links for mainly foxsat hdr capacitors, de-solder, remove and solder in the new ones making sure +/- right way round. Last psu I did was on a shuttle cube pc, luckily had over-specced capacitors to hand. Alternatively psu can be sent off for repair, assuming of course that it is the psu.
As far as software goes, all boxes have problems, those that don't have problems get outdated quickly, those that update fight an almost losing battle keeping up with the changes forced upon them. I have a TT throw-away huawei box with external psu, takes 5 mins to boot up, I've never used it productively as my humax's are so much easier.
Add in youview/freetime layers and the software soon becomes a quagmire and it's impossible at times for consumers to tell the difference between software and hardware problems.
If it were my dtr-1000, I'd have the psu out, see if there's a matching capacitor kit or if I weren't handy, send it off for repair. I'm also a bit fanatical about location, placement and air-flow and I'm not surprised at this time of year where it gets quite cold outside, central heating goes on and bakes boxes. I've been in some living rooms and it's like walking through treacle, it's a wonder anything survives the heat.
| Thu 22 Jan 2015 7:29:45
#16 |
- and is the one I use for updating the changes thread so booted many times a day.
