Is fixing a dsr6000 worth it?

[fairyprinc]

Hi,

I have many (7) Philips DSR6000s which have provided many years of useful service. A while back, on the same day, two of them became unable to make a daily phone call because the "modem failed". After 300 days of not making a call, the DVR was shut off.

I moved the drives into a spare DSR6000 and it made a call, but I kept getting a message about a hardware problem and it would not allow me to access the now playing menu.

I put a new drive into the DSR6000 and I thought all was fine (except loosing my recordings). Then after a few days of service, I am getting a continuous reboot on the "almost there screen". It was upgraded to 3.5d.

I like my Tivo and I like my DirecTV, and I think that if I get new equipment, I can no longer have Tivo. But should I just upgrade the equipment and move on. There are drawbacks to a series1 machine.

Let me know what you suggest as I now have 2 machines with failed modems and no DVR service and one in a reboot loop.

Thanks.

[Lou Jacob]

Hi,

I have many (7) Philips DSR6000s which have provided many years of useful service. A while back, on the same day, two of them became unable to make a daily phone call because the "modem failed". After 300 days of not making a call, the DVR was shut off.

I moved the drives into a spare DSR6000 and it made a call, but I kept getting a message about a hardware problem and it would not allow me to access the now playing menu.

I put a new drive into the DSR6000 and I thought all was fine (except loosing my recordings). Then after a few days of service, I am getting a continuous reboot on the "almost there screen". It was upgraded to 3.5d.

I like my Tivo and I like my DirecTV, and I think that if I get new equipment, I can no longer have Tivo. But should I just upgrade the equipment and move on. There are drawbacks to a series1 machine.

Let me know what you suggest as I now have 2 machines with failed modems and no DVR service and one in a reboot loop.

Thanks.

If you are happy with the units when they are in working condition, I would say yes. Replacing the units would either mean switching to DIRECTV's brand of DVR, or switching to a cable provider to allow you to continue using a TiVo device.

The "hardware problem" you saw was because you put a drive from one unit into another without doing a 'clear and delete everything' - do that, and the unit will work fine.

The modem can easily be repaired for $99 by sending the unit to one of our service partners (www.ccscorporation.net) for repair. Or you can use a TurboNet card, connect your unit to the network and it will use your network to make the daily call, instead.

Most problems with your units can be fixed by replacing the hard drive, but most others can be repaired by sending the unit to the aforementioned repair center.

One thing to note is that there is currently a software update (to 3.5d) underway, so if your units are using drives larger than 137GB, you *should* leave your phone line unplugged to prevent any problems with the software update.

Our kits currently ship with a modified version of 3.5c and when we receive the newest updates, we will likely update our kits with 3.5d to be current, although we don't know exactly what benefits 3.5d might provide.

Lou

[fairyprinc]

I think my modem problems started around the roll out of 3.5c. Both stopped working on exactly the same day. And yes, the moment I replaced the drive in the one, it upgraded to 3.5d and that was the end of that! So does 3.5d not like large drives? I should just go back to 3.5c and unplug the phone! It was happy not making a call for 300 days!

Also, on the one unit with the broken modem, is there a way to put the drives into another machine without the clear and delete everything. I actually wanted to copy the files from this two drive tivo to a single drive as I was getting some glitchy behavior that I thought the drives were getting old.

Finally is the directv dvr so very different than Tivo. It seems silly to me to spend $99 to fix an old series one when i can get a new Directv DVR for the same price which would have new drives and a USB port, etc.

Thanks again!

[Lou Jacob]

I think my modem problems started around the roll out of 3.5c. Both stopped working on exactly the same day. And yes, the moment I replaced the drive in the one, it upgraded to 3.5d and that was the end of that! So does 3.5d not like large drives? I should just go back to 3.5c and unplug the phone! It was happy not making a call for 300 days!

Also, on the one unit with the broken modem, is there a way to put the drives into another machine without the clear and delete everything. I actually wanted to copy the files from this two drive tivo to a single drive as I was getting some glitchy behavior that I thought the drives were getting old.

Finally is the directv dvr so very different than Tivo. It seems silly to me to spend $99 to fix an old series one when i can get a new Directv DVR for the same price which would have new drives and a USB port, etc.

Thanks again!

If you've installed one of our kits, we've modified the software to accommodate hard drives larger than 137GB. Unfortunately, DIRECTV hasn't updated their software with a kernel that can deal with large drives, so any updates would overwrite the changes we've made, and require them to be reimplemented for things to work properly.

The new DVR's from DIRECTV are very different as they are not TiVo, but they 'do the job' in a generic way. It is certainly not silly to spend $100 to keep the unit running if you prefer TiVo over the generic; it is a question of what you prefer.

[fairyprinc]

I guess I'll need to check out exactly what Generic DVR is. I do like my Tivo.


One last question on the 3.5d upgrade. If one of my last working upgraded tivo (large drives and a cachecard) is still at 3.5c (that upgrade wiped out my cachecard and web access) will the upgrade to 3.5d kill it? I'm unplugging the phone as I type this!

Thanks for all your help.

[Lou Jacob]

I guess I'll need to check out exactly what Generic DVR is. I do like my Tivo.


One last question on the 3.5d upgrade. If one of my last working upgraded tivo (large drives and a cachecard) is still at 3.5c (that upgrade wiped out my cachecard and web access) will the upgrade to 3.5d kill it? I'm unplugging the phone as I type this!

Thanks for all your help.

Yes, that is what I meant by my previous post.