Help...My HD PVR dead after only three days...

[phlucas]

Hello everybody,

It seems my new HD PVR died after only three days of use...Indeed,this morning I could not see the video on my tw, meaning the video pass through does not work anymore. In addition, neither sageTV or TotalMediaExtreme recognize the device, and when I unplug and plug again the usb cable, I have got the following message:
USB Device not recognized.


It is hard to believe my unit died after only three days of use, or it means I have been very unlucky, or the quality is very bad...

Is there a way a reset the unit? Did anybody here had a similar problem?

Thanks very much in advance for your help...

Best regards,

Philippe

[gplasky]

Do you get any power lights? Does the power switxh work? Couple of people have posted issues with the power switch.

Gerry

[phlucas]

Hello,

Yes, the power swith work, and the blue light close to the power works too...

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by phlucas

Hello everybody,

It seems my new HD PVR died after only three days of use...Indeed,this morning I could not see the video on my tw, meaning the video pass through does not work anymore. In addition, neither sageTV or TotalMediaExtreme recognize the device, and when I unplug and plug again the usb cable, I have got the following message:
USB Device not recognized.

That sounds very similar to the problem I had with my original HD-PVR (a C1 version if I recall). It started out working fine with an occasional (say once every few days) dropout that would require shutting it off and turning it on again for it to reconnect to the computer.
Then it worked fine for several weeks with no troubles.

Suddenly it wouldn't work reliably at all. If I was lucky I'd get a couple recordings out of it before it would disappear from the system and require a power cycle to reconnect. This got progressively worse and near the end wouldn't even finish one recording either in SageTV or with SageTV shut down and using TME.
The very last symptom was the occasional error message like yours when trying to reconnect it and even when it would connect it would only stay connected for a minute or so.

I RMA'ed it and my *new* D2 unit has been working flawlessly for a week and a half now. Multiple recordings every day with 0 dropouts.

I had a very easy time with Hauppauge. I explained what was happening and they offered me an RMA # right on the spot. I also understand that some have even been able to have them cross-ship your RMA unit if you give them a credit card to charge you until they receive your unit.

My friend Pat had troubles with his too. His power switch was defective and would turn on/off all on its own. He just got his RMA unit hooked back up a couple days ago, but its been working fine so far.

I think Hauppauge does have some kind of QA issue with whoever is manufacturing it for them. Hopefully they will get that straightened out, but in the meantime at least they are easy to deal with getting individual problems addressed.

[phlucas]

Thanks,

Yes, I have been very unlucky with my unit...By the way, this is the E1 version. In fact, the good new in this story is that I bought mine from amazon.com, and they already sent me a replacement unit...Just hope I will not have any problems with my new one...

Cheers

[waynedunham]

Sorry to hear you've had troubles with your E1. Hopefully you just got a bad unit and its not some conflict with another piece of hardware/software on lyour system and the replacement will work fine.

[kevdod]

This is my second HDPVR, first one was a D2 and it failed to work about 75% of the time without a hard reset (read: unplug, plug). This made changing channels a bit of a challenge, as you can imagine. Additionally, it would occasionally just stop being recognized by sagetv and only some mysterious combination of hard reset, unpluging usb, stopping and starting sage service, stopping and starting sagetv, cursing profusely, and hitting it would get it back so it was being recognized by sage.

I sent that one back and got a new one (Amazon is the best) - and in the grand lottery of hdpvr versions I received the E1! Yay! The golden ticket.

And it worked well for about 1 week (and just to clarify, working "well" in the HDPVR world meant it only had to be cycled about once every two days, and for every 3rd or so time you changed the channel with it you got the dreaded black screen and would have to change the channel a few more times b/f it would finally take - but hey, at least you could get it to do something).

A few days ago it again just stopped working, but this time I could not get it to come back to life. So it has been two days now and about 7 hours of trouble shooting and still no luck - sagetv will not recognize it (i.e. it does not appear as a video source at the stv setup menu).

I am pretty sure this is because it is not being recognized by my htpc - but occasionally it will be recognized upon one of the hundreds of usb in/outs but it will come up as "hardware device not installed completely". This is the same message I got when it was working before, so not sure what has changed. But hey, I never understood what would make it work when it failed before, so I guess this is par for the course.

Not too sure what to do now, but for anyone wanting to buy the Happaugue HDPVR do yourself (and your wife/girlfriend) a favor and don't do it. Only misery will follow.

And will someone other than those hacks at Happauge please make an HDPVR that works? Please?