Repairing a Freeview box (was Freeview STBs and TiVo)

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If everyone paid for a lifetime subscription the EPG would be dead by now. They wouldn't have any income so it would not be worth continuing.

That is purely personal.

Have you tried Sky+? Sky+ is by far better than anything else i have used.

IMHO that is no longer really needed, just use iPlayer, sky player, ITV player, etc.

If you want to record programs to keep that a media centre PC is hard to beat, you can drop the programs onto another media (DVD, network drive, USB stick, etc.) with ease. The EPG is pretty good too.

Reply to
dennis
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Ooops, sorry bout that, the one below is the right one and still pretty cheap.

Yes, agreed

Different cost models, free post offset by higher margins on the goods, quite handy for little orders like this one.

Reply to
fred

Have you owned a TiVo? I've tried Sky+ at a friends house. Still, IMO, not as good or as simple as the TiVo. Additionally, my friends got through 4 Sky+ boxes in about 4 years. Our TiVo is knocking on for 10 years old now. Has probably crashed about 3 times in all those years and only lost data only once when the HD needed replacing.

Rather missing the point. With those, you only see what you know about or can be arsed searching for. The TiVo will record stuff that you perhaps wouldn't have thought of recording but that you might enjoy (when there's b*gger all else on).

I rarely want to archive programs forever, just time shift them and for that the TiVo excels in performance and most particularly reliability. The TiVo really is, IMO, the canines cojones of PVRs. I say "is" rather than "was" as I think it still outperforms the vast majority of PVRs even today. Just a shame you can't get a new one in the UK. :-(

Tim

Reply to
Tim Downie

Indeed. Most electronics is super reliable, and generally its one stray thing that goes. Identify it and replace it and all is well.

Its the identifying that is the problem.

I had a TV years agpo that randomly lost colors..hitting it restored them. One day even that failed to work.

I ran it caseless and prodded things with a long plastic knitting needle.

It became apparent that there were dry joints, so I looked at what I was prodding and found eyelets instead of plated through holes Yuk!. These looked distinctly dodgy, so I resoldered them on that card. That fixed one set of probelms. Thenh I got mad and resoldered every single eyelet on every board.

The set was perfect for several years until the house took a direct lightning strike on the telephone wire. The TV went then as did anything else on 'standby'..

Sigh. I liked that TV.

In your case that capacitors is almost certainly the output smoother of a SMPS. It has to take a LOT of high frequency ripple current, and is the one most likely to suffer if its even slightly suspect in the first place. It will get hot and eventually either short, or cease to do its job.

I am pretty sure you have identified the correct cap.

Old valve sets are similar - the caps all dry out. Many a valve radio will spring to life after all the paper and electrolytic caps are replaced..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Got one already thanks. A handy tool.

Tim

Reply to
Tim Downie

You will find the job easier by using a desoldering device to remove the solder from both contacts before pulling the old capacitor out. A manual suction device is the the best thing.

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are lots to choose from on the Farnell site:
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from around 3.40 to over 22 pounds. take your pick - I found these ok:
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will then be easy to mount the new capacitor passing the wires through the holes.

Roger R

Reply to
Roger R

How true...

My CRT monitor is on the blink. It will run perfectly for hours and then the picture goes almost black. The slightest tap on the casing is often enough to bring it back to life. Sometimes it takes a thump.

I've tried that, but frustratingly I can't find the fault. The soldered joints on the PCB all seem to be sound. It will be shame to dump this monitor since it's less strain on the eyes than my flat panel screen.

I have a 9-valve National HRO that still works after 70 years...

Reply to
John Legon
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AFAICS the only thing TiVo offers above a media center PC is that it decides to record stuff by its self. If that is something you need then you need a TiVo. I prefer the better quality that you get on Sky+ and on MCE.

Reply to
dennis

I have built a mythtv box (will readily admit it's not suitable for everyone) it does the usual "pause live TV" tricks, can record specific programmes from the EPG, it does series-record, can record based on keywords, and save recordings to DVD if required.

Because I have digital tuners it can record multiple programmes from a mux at once, and because I have multiple tuners it can record from multiple muxes at once, I can control it via an web interface (at a push view recordings remotely too).

Occasionally I get a bit of grief from linux upgrades breaking something, usually audio glitches but smooth video playback breaks from time to time, but I wouldn't be without it really.

Reply to
Andy Burns

...but, have you ever owned a TiVo?

Tim

Reply to
Tim Downie

i have. as a user experience it was great but sky boxes do the important bits better - i.e sound and picture quality, 2 channel recording and HD viewing and recording. those things outweigh the Tivo user friendliness. now if you could pay to load tivo software onto a sky hd box - that would be something i'd do.

Reply to
The dog from that film you saw

Since we got a new bigger hard drive and I started doing all my recording on "HQ", I can't say I've noticed any difference from broadcast. That said, I hardly ever watch TV "live" so it's possible that there is a slight degradation.

Would be nice but it's not something that bothers me often

I wish I wish I wish they would sell the HD TiVo in the UK!

I aknowledge that the TiVo is getting left behind but as long as the majority of terrestial broadcasting is in standard definition I'll be keeping mine. It's a great shame that they haven't licenced the software to be run on PVRs in countries where TiVos aren't being sold.

Tim

Reply to
Tim Downie

i just don't think their business plan works - other than the seriously obsessed ( nerds like myself ), who is willing to pay a tenner a month for tv listings? - yes there's a lifetime option but again, who would pay for that even?

Reply to
The dog from that film you saw

Apart from rubbish marketting, sales were killed by digital telly and free EPG. It's very hard to convince folk of the merits of paying for program information!

We paid for the lifetime option as it only represented less than 2 years subscription.

Tim

Reply to
Tim Downie

In message , fred writes

But then, I could have sent him one for nothing ...

Reply to
geoff

Actually, you've made a good point there: many capacitors in that role are properly specified to handle the high frequency, high amplitude ripple current, and a bog standard electrolytic may fail very prematurely, even if of the correct capacity and voltage.

SteveT

Reply to
Steve Thackery

The user interface is fantastic. So much more intuitive than Sky+. Massively better than the freeview boxes I've tried. Not seen a V+ box but keen on having a play...

The other thing that TiVo does really well is searching and season passes. It used to be the case (might still be?) that if you set a series link on Sky+ and the show wasn't on in the next 2 weeks then it wouldn't get recorded.

I set a season pass for Scrapheap challenge in series 1. It's not missed an episode yet (although I'm tempted to kill it now with the new version of the show...).

My son loves watching it and wanted to see the Land Yacht episode. Quickly set an autorecording wishlist for episodes of scrapheap challenge that mentioned the word "yacht" in the description. A few weeks later it had recorded the show at 3am on some satellite channel.

That sort of thing is what I now take for granted and nothing else seems to offer :-(

Just a real shame TiVo couldn't have done a deal with C&W/NTL/VirginMedia to produce a real Sky+ killer :-(

Darren

Reply to
dmc

I agree - and I'm a TiVo lover :-(

The only chance I really saw them having was to get in with the cable companies (well, company now) when Sky launched the Sky+ box.

I'd pay 500 quid for a HD twin tuner Virgin media box without thinking twice if it was running TiVo software. Unfortunately, most people wouldn't.

Darren

Reply to
dmc

Heh, I put a bigger drive in it years ago. Got a spare PSU upstairs somewhere as well. It's features I'm lacking.

Getting fed up with not having multiple tuners - and I want HD now I've actually got a TV that could make something of it.

Darren

Reply to
dmc
8<

No. Because I don't think it gives anything over what I have.

Reply to
dennis

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