Skysurfer Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 I would say regular audio dropouts in my new audio system receiver or audio/video dropouts of my new TV would make them defective products and I would be exchanging or refunding. But it seems with PVRs they all do it to some extent and its just expected. My machine has 2 second audio and video dropouts maybe once per 2 hours of recording. Sometimes it has dropouts that are much longer (hard to determine how much was missed but I'm talking 10 seconds plus). Sometimes the picture pixelates for a few seconds. My wife swears some shows disappear from the disk by themselves (and not just the auto deleted ones) but she is hardly a techno whiz so I can't be sure about that one! We rarely watch a recording while recording two channels so I don't think its always to do with stress on the machine. To help me determine whether my Mediastar is acceptable or whether it has unacceptable problems I'd like to hear what others machines behave like! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
temporary1 Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 My machine has 2 second audio and video dropouts maybe once per 2 hours of recording.Sounds like my mediastar. Reception is ok, not fantastic 70-80% mostly, some channels 100%... Sometimes it has dropouts that are much longer (hard to determine how much was missed but I'm talking 10 seconds plus)........ auto deleted ones)Dropouts will occur in recordings when an autodelete takes place (or a manual one for that matter). Best to make sure there is enough room manually.Sounds normal for my unit... not sure why we accept anything less than perfection though... The worst an analogue drop out gets is a slight hiss/pop or fuzzyness. The best a digital dropout gets is no sound/video chunk for x time, the data simply isnt there... Make sure you are using firmware 206a at least (not sure I'd recommend the 2073/2084 yet, but if you have it then stick to it i guess). 2069 and earlier had bigger dropout bugs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveMews Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 since i put on 1.4 and upgraded to a 8mb cache 400gb drive i have had zero glitches. delete time is now under 2 seconds too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon1 Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 OOps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CameronD Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 ... My machine has 2 second audio and video dropouts maybe once per 2 hours of recording.... That sounds about right to me. I have a suspicion that the actual dropouts are often a fraction of a second (the length that the picture pixellates), but that it takes a second or so to resynch the sound and so it doesn't play it until it has it worked out. If I am just recording and not doing anything using the remote then I could often have no dropouts at all. Navigating with the menus still seems to give an occasional glitch. Actively messing with the files on disc - deleting, cutting etc will cause a bit more of a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon1 Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 I am not really sure if this is 'off-topic'... but my Mediastar has been fine for the three months since I bought it. However, suddenly five days ago when I had been watching live TV and recording what I was watching at the same time for about two hours, the audio disappeared (not the picture). After about 30 seconds, I switched channels and back, but still no sound. Rebooting the Mediastar fixed the problem. Last night, similar, but this time switching channels and back the sound reappeared. Curiously, audio was recorded during the live-audio-dropout periods. Anyone else experienced this behaviour...is it 'normal', or should I return my Mediastar? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grahameh Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 Mine has the odd dropout while watching replays. Lat night it also lost sound while watching the ABC live but came back on after switching channels (but that isn't common.) I have just accepted the dropouts as minor hiccoughs - everything else works so well. This is another subject, but my number buttons on the remote won't select channels - am I missing something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dixitr Posted March 1, 2007 Share Posted March 1, 2007 I also have noticed occassional sound drop - ususlly only couple of seconds, and only in recordings (not that i have muched live tv since i bought this unit). The drops are quite infrequent. I guess this has something to do with actual recording/playback process and not with a tuner. On the same antenna I have a humax HD-STB, and in past couple of years I do not remember audio drop EVER. There have been glitches (esp ch10 with flashes accross screen, ch7 picture freez etc) but these too are very rare. maybe couple of times in a YEAR. so can be a buffering issue ? but at current level of audio drop out which i have noticed is acceptable. Pls note that even in PC based PVR solutions you get audio/video drops, as well as occasional audio sync issues which can ruin an ENTIRE program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grey Posted March 1, 2007 Share Posted March 1, 2007 Mine does the same thing. I await a stable release of the firmware and hope that will fix it. It is not really bad but it is annoying - I get some sound drop or pixellation in most files I record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CameronD Posted March 1, 2007 Share Posted March 1, 2007 This is another subject, but my number buttons on the remote won't select channels - am I missing something? I think that is by design. I find it much easier to switch by having a small number of channels in the favourites list - I have finished selecting the channel using the up-down buttons by the time I could work out which number button was which. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
temporary1 Posted March 2, 2007 Share Posted March 2, 2007 This is another subject, but my number buttons on the remote won't select channels - am I missing something?The channel change by number takes a while, a few seconds... If you hit a number, say 9, you have to wait. If you press it again you end up with 99 which gets you no where. (You should see a window pop up that lets shows the digits entered) Some of the channels are also on odd numbers, TEN=1, 7=might be 6, SBS=3, etc... look at the second number on the "OK" list to see what they are on your unit...This "feature" would work well if you had 100's of channels to choose from (like most other countries ) but would be nice if they re-dressed this for australia's limited selection - 2 digits, faster commit to change... But in the end... Yes use favourites, or delete all the duplicate and HD channels and just use the up and down... its much quicker... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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