Toshiba HDD-J35 user webpage

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Hi All,

This forum is great, but often information gets a bit scattered so I though I would start to try pulling some information together on the J35.

I've put out the starters of a webpage here

Just wanted to get it moving, so nothing exceptional there yet, but I've put up some photos to give you an idea what the menus are like.

Any suggestions and info welcome...all critisism welcome and taken on board:)

Cheers, Cliff

[Scalpel]

Thanks for all the effort you have obviously put into the webpage - Toshiba should pay you royalties! Although maybe with all the teething problems they might want to duck for cover for a while

It seems a bit of a pity that Joe-public is used as their private crash test dummy - surely some of these glitches should have been picked up on beta testing.

J.

P.S. The link at the bottom of the web-page is incorrect

Contact

I’m a regular poster at the DTV forum (www.dtvinfo.org) as CliffofOz  or you can email directly at kerryncliff@(deleted).com.au

[Darrylp]

Thanks very much Cliff - that's really great but should it not also have a "bugs" and workaround section?

Regards

Darryl

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I'll get the page update asap.

Cliff

[Alien]

Hi Cliff,

Great effort. I would open a separate email addrss for correspondance about these machines rather than publishing your normal one on the web page.

Regards

Paul

[robo1503559542]

CliffofOz,

Thanks for all your work and good info.

[chaserracer]

Hi Cliff

Great work!!! Really appreciate the effort you have made.

As mentioned by Darryl, a "bugs" and "workaround" section would be great.

M.

[CliffofOz1503559525]

I would open a separate email addrss for correspondance about these machines rather than publishing your normal one on the web page.

I was undecided about what to do about an email address. I was going to set up a dedicated one, but I though the last thing I need is yet another email address to check every day:) I'll take up your suggestion if there's a deluge of correspondence - thx.

Cliff

[numbat]

G'day Cliff,

Well done on the site - nice to have it all in one place.

Have been monitoring the thread for a while and think I will hang on til they iron out the bugs before purchasing. Have you had any experience with the RGB Output (Mini D-sub 15-pin) connection. Do you know of any faults or bugs with that?

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Have you had any experience with the RGB Output (Mini D-sub 15-pin) connection

I did have one try using RGB, but the plasma didn't like it...unsupported signal error. As luck would have it, I've just dug out another VGA cable to give it another go. I'm pretty sure someone else had it working. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers, Cliff

[Travis1503559517]

Hi Cliff,

Thanks for the page, very good. You have quite a few programs missing in your HD programs list... check out http://www.widescreentv.com.au/ for ones you've missed if your interested.

cheers

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Thanks Travis,

I'll include your link as a reference. I just sat with the TV guide out of the paper and made up a quick list when I put the table together.

Cliff

[Guest HDMEYES]

Hi all

New to the forum but finally brought home our J35 on Tuesday and in two words we're impressed. We have connected to Pioneer 505 via monster 400 (we know overpriced but wanted cable quick) and the picture is stunning. Compared to SD have noticed a few more partial drop outs but the Pioneer installer said they are about to boost Bris signals so fingers crossed this will help stop this. We also bought a Samsung HD850 DVD player on the weekend and connected this up first using the provided HDMI cable and Lord of the Rings was just amazing.

So to my questions. We know we can get a gefen hdmi switcher but is anyone aware of any other hdmi switchers available locally so that we can have both hdmi boxes connected at once? The dvd is back to component.

We do not know whether to have the tosh on 720p or 1080i. The auto setting is out of the question, terrible, terrible, when changing channels. What are the advantages/disadvantages of either?

And are those horrible green/orange/red lights on the front panel annoying anyone else? Our box is behind frosted glass and they are like traffic lights! When it's time to put the box to bed at night the red light (when off) gives our living room a lovely red glow.

cheers

pete

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Hi Pete,

You might get better response to your questions if you repost in this thread here. Most of the feedback seems to be happening there.

Cliff

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Hi all,

Just an update to let you know that i've finished documenting all of the bugs on the set.

This is turning into a bit of an epic...I've still got to finish documenting stuff out of the manual but I'll get there eventually.

Feel free to check it out here.

Cliff

[chaserracer]

Hi Cliff

Site is looking great and is a great resource to all J35 owners (and possible J35 owners to be)!

Can I please just confirm/clear up some information around the problem/glitch that I experienced, that you have mentioned under Playback: Screen goes blank and 'bad or week signal' message.

This was not a tuner problem during the recording, as the tuner did successfully record the complete program.

During playback of the recording (approximately 1 minute in), the screen went black and I received the 'bad or weak signal' message indicating a tuner failure as you have noted. This was not the case, as I rewinded the recorded program (rewind lock-up after forwarding too far to check if any of the remainder of the recording was successful) to find that the picture and audio were successfully recorded for the period in which I received the 'bad or weak signal' message.

I trust that the above makes sense?

On a separate tangent, I have noticed the units response to the remote control is far superior when the unit has been on standby overnight and is used the following morning - is this a possible heat related issue? After several hours of watching (and possibly recording) at night the response to the remote becomes poor.

Thanks again for collating all the info on one site.

M.

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Thanks for the feedback.

So the fault wasn't in the recording?

It was simply an message that came up during playback that related to some other issue? e.g. The tuner detected a weak signal and decided to let you know even though weren't watching a tuner (i.e. live broadcast) at the time.

Were you recording another show at the time and the unit was letting you know it detected a weak signal?

Your heat theory is worth considering.

Maybe it could also be because the batteries in the remote get a little drained after heavy usage and are more refreshed in the morning. We're probably all using the provided batteries which may not the best or vary in quality. If you're having remote issues, it would be handy if you could check that out by trying fresh batteries. I would do it, but my remote seems okay.

Thanks again, Cliff

[chaserracer]

Hi Cliff

No. The fault was not in the recording. I believe the message (and black screen) that came on during playback of the recording may be related to some other issue.

I was not recording another show at the same time.

Why would (during playback of a recording) the J35 override the playback to produce a black screen with the bad or weak signal message (when the recording did not have this issue)???? I have not had a single dropout of signal with this unit... Ahhh glitches...

Good point regarding the batteries, but I have already checked this (and replaced batteries), and the batteries are not an issue.

Thanks again.

Michael

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Why would (during playback of a recording) the J35 override the playback to produce a black screen with the bad or weak signal message (when the recording did not have this issue)????

No idea. Put it down to slightly buggy new firmware? I get the occassion weak signal message and blank screen too.

Good point regarding the batteries, but I have already checked this (and replaced batteries), and the batteries are not an issue.

Thanks for checking that out.

Cheers, Cliff

[Vidman]

The bugs on this PVR are getting beyond a joke...

Not only is my rewind lock issue getting worse (it now does it whenever rewind is activated) but in the last 48 hours it has just forgotten to record stuff!!!

I had all the programs correctly entered in the REC Menu -- but when the time came recording did not activate. The clock displays the correct time and date, but the PVR just 'forgot' to initiate recording.

This is a monumental issue that has me fuming as it basically renders the unit totally unreliable and untrustworthy.

I highly reccommend to anyone considering buying this PVR to wait until after the first software update is released.

Come on Castel! You said this firmware update would be ready by now.

I'm at my wits end here...

[CliffofOz1503559525]

in the last 48 hours it has just forgotten to record stuff!!!

This is the first report of this so far.

Presumably, you've double checked that everything was set up okay.

Guess there could some glitch or maybe there was a specific reason for it not recording

(1) hard drive full with existing recordings

(2) hard drive full because timeslip left active...the entire broadcast is saved to the drive until you exist timeslip mode.

(3) time signal sync'd with broadcasters so if a bad time signal was sent it would have screwed up the timer

(4) power outage (e.g. brown out) caused clock to screw up. Clock resets itself every 30 minutes, but if it happened just prior to a recording you would have a 30 minute delay before it reset itself.

(5) the unit seems to reboot every 30 mins to update it's clock from the broadsignal. By sheer fluke, it might have done this just as your program was due to start. Sounds a stretch, but I had an incident when I was deleting a file from the library just as a new recording started...the library list wasn't refreshed as I did it and the new program threw shuffled the entries down by one and resulted in the wrong file being deleted...even though I had definitely selected the correct file (i.e. flukes are a reality).

(6) was it EPG related?

Were you around when you noticed it fail to record? If so, did the unit do anything odd?

I'd be curious to know if this happens again (to you or anyone else) It's really hard to analyse 'one offs'.

Cliff

[CliffofOz1503559525]

my rewind lock issue getting worse (it now does it whenever rewind is activated)

Agree totally. From comments I've received, this seems to be the most common annoyance to users.

To press the Rewind button and end up in 'rewind hell', or miss a bit of dialogue? I'm opting for the later.

Bring on that firmware update:)

Cliff

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Still updating the page on a daily basis.

Plans to turn into a site rather than a single page, but in the meantime, I've done a bit of tweaking to make the page load a bit quicker.

Replaced pictures (embebbed on the page) with hyperlinks to the images. This will reduce page size from 1.3MB to 0.5MB. Also, image file names will now be static rather than dynamically generated by Word. The browser should be able to use the cached images rather refreshing them because they had been changed (by Word).

Thanks again for the positive feedback I've been receiving by email:)

Cheers, Cliff

[CliffofOz1503559525]

Webpage updated with photos of case interior.

Many thanks to titan44 (Tor) for supplying these.

Cliff