How often do HD200s or HD300s fail?

[wayner]

I believe that the HD100 suffered from the capacitor plague issue, but how frequent is failure of the HD200s or HD300s?

I first bought the HD-200s when they were initially released (taht was Dec 2008, almost six years ago). They have been in constant use ever since and I have yet to have one fail. I also have two HD-300s that are both fine as well.

Over the last three years I have bought "backups" on the second-hand market and I now have the HD200s or HD300s installed in 8-9 locations around the house. I also have about 4-5 spares, including a couple that I just bought.

But I am starting to think that I am being overly careful since I have yet to have a failure.

Have many people out there experienced failures?

[gilded07]

Originally Posted by wayner

I believe that the HD100 suffered from the capacitor plague issue, but how frequent is failure of the HD200s or HD300s?

I first bought the HD-200s when they were initially released (taht was Dec 2008, almost six years ago). They have been in constant use ever since and I have yet to have one fail. I also have two HD-300s that are both fine as well.

Over the last three years I have bought "backups" on the second-hand market and I now have the HD200s or HD300s installed in 8-9 locations around the house. I also have about 4-5 spares, including a couple that I just bought.

But I am starting to think that I am being overly careful since I have yet to have a failure.

Have many people out there experienced failures?

the only hdx00 extender I have bought from sagetv is an hd300 and it is still going strong. I bought a used hd200 a year or so after the sagetv store closed and this past summer the hdmi out quit working so I'm using the component outs now.

Although I too have some hd300s in reserve, this hdmi thing got me thinking though that for this very reason the hd200s may be a better buy because of their 2nd output option, not to mention they can usually be found cheaper than hd300s. The hd300s look like they need a special cable to get component out and then audio separately too. I'm just using the L/R stereo audio channels on the component cable and its fine for me. For what I view, the audio is fine w/ hd200s.

[Dargason]

I lost the ethernet ports on both of my HD300's this summer because of an electrical surge (lightning, I think). I was able to get one of them working using a USB wifi adaptor, but out of the 4 wifi adaptors I bought (all the same model) only one actually worked and I gave up and am now using the HD200 I had in the closet at the time.

So I guess the answer is, 'it depends on how often lightning hits near your home.'

[wayner]

@gilded - The HD-300s have a breakout cable that gives you component so you should have one of those on the one that you bought from Sage.

@Dargason - Most of my extenders are plugged into UPS's so that should help if we get hit by lightning. One of the benefits of a UPS is that the Sage extender does not turn on when you get a power blip. Since I have so many extenders in my house having them all try to connect to the server will cause the server to crash as it runs out of JVM.

My house actually got hit by lightning about 25 years ago - we lived out in the country and had a tall antenna for TV/FM. The lightning strike fried the TV, VCR and Stereo receiver as they were all connected to the antenna.

[pjpjpjpj]

I think I just lost an HD300 ethernet port in the past week. I bought it used from someone here about 8 months or so ago, so I have no idea of the usage before I got it, but it isn't used too frequently here. It just stopped finding the server. I tried it with two different ethernet ports and wires and it still won't. I haven't had the time to "really" fiddle with it, but I have a feeling it's broken. It fires up in standalone mode so the whole unit isn't broken, but it's pretty useless without the server (unless I use a USB drive locally in it, I suppose).

Which actually leads me to the question I was going to post if I indeed find this to be the case... is it possible to replace the ethernet port alone within an HD300?

I also lost an HD200 a while back. I have a mix of units I bought myself (which get fairly light use) and units I bought used on here, so I don't really know how "old" it was, but it completely stopped working. I had it on a switched outlet where it would get completely turned off when I wasn't using it, so it's possible the repeated surges of having that plug switched on and off did something to the power supply. I've since changed the unit in that location to a continuous power source. I still have the broken one...are the HD200 power supplies replaceable?

On the other side of the coin, I bought one HD300 when they came out (whatever year that was) and it is on our main TV which gets used every single day, sometimes on as much as maybe 6-8 hours (?), but always on at least an hour or two per day, and it's still chugging along fine. And I have an HD200 in our bedroom which probably gets an hour per day, virtually every day, that I bought during initial release, and it's still fine. The HD100s I bought back in '08 when I started in Sage still work fine after cap replacement (though I only still have one operating and it's only used once every month or two).

[wayner]

Your best bet on the ethernet for the HD300 might be via USB - maybe a USB ethernet dongle will work and then there is always the possibility of wifi.

[pjpjpjpj]

Dargason and wayner: wasn't there a wifi adapter sold by Sage for the HD300? Or do you just mean you can buy any brand of USB wifi adapter and it will work?

[wayner]

Yes there was a wifi dongle sold by SageTV. But apparently other devices that use the same chipset will also work. Do some searching on these forums to try to find more details.

[Dargason]

I bought 3 or 4 of the ones that were supposed to work -- the Belkin N1. One of them works, but the other two don't. It might be there were changes in the firmware at some point. The two that work work with my PC, though they seem to occasionally cause a BSOD.

The lightning issue I had seemed to have 'gotten in' through the only device I had on my network that wasn't plugged in via a surge protector... the spike propagated through my ethernet and took out ports on several switches, 2 HD300s, my router, one of my HDHomeRuns and the MB of my server. It was not a happy day.

[gilded07]

Originally Posted by wayner

@gilded - The HD-300s have a breakout cable that gives you component so you should have one of those on the one that you bought from Sage.

Thx - I'll have to get the box back out and check into that. Does that hd300 breakout cable carry audio too?

[KeithAbbott]

I wonder what the ratio is of HD200 ethernet ports failing versus HD300 ethernet ports failing. It seems like most of the ethernet port failures are on the HD300s, but I could be wrong...

[wayner]

Originally Posted by gilded07

Thx - I'll have to get the box back out and check into that. Does that hd300 breakout cable carry audio too?

Yes it does carry analog audio and there is an optical audio output on the HD300 as well so that is the way to go if you are using an AVR. Here is a photo of the breakout cable from a "For Sale" thread on this forum.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

I wonder what the ratio is of HD200 ethernet ports failing versus HD300 ethernet ports failing. It seems like most of the ethernet port failures are on the HD300s, but I could be wrong...

You could be right. I haven't studied this too closely but it seems to me that the HD300 gets hotter than the HD200.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by wayner

I haven't studied this too closely but it seems to me that the HD300 gets hotter than the HD200.

Significantly. As in, the HD200 doesn't get hot at all and the HD300 is very hot all of the time.

Whether this contributes to ethernet port failures, who knows...

[gilded07]

Originally Posted by wayner

You could be right. I haven't studied this too closely but it seems to me that the HD300 gets hotter than the HD200.

yes, absolutely true. On more than one occasion I have had to put a frozen ice pack on top of my HD300 in order to get it to work correctly. This has happened probably 4 or 5 times since I bought it new so not frequently. It would shut off for no reason and when I touched the top of it, it was very hot. This has never happened with my HD200. After several mins with the ice pack, it started and worked normally.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by gilded07

On more than one occasion I have had to put a frozen ice pack on top of my HD300 in order to get it to work correctly. This has happened probably 4 or 5 times since I bought it new so not frequently. It would shut off for no reason and when I touched the top of it, it was very hot. This has never happened with my HD200. After several mins with the ice pack, it started and worked normally.

I never had the HD300 shut down but I was very concerned with how hot it got -- so much so that I could not hold a finger to it for more than a second. So I purchased a laptop cooling pad - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...uct_refresh_T1 -- and that keeps it at room temperature. I plug the USB cable into the AVR and the fan is completely silent.

The HD300 is, however, beginning to shut down unexpectedly lately -- but for some other reason I have been unable to locate. (I know it not a heat-related problem because I can swap out with two other HD300s and still be unable to start-up.)

[Rob]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

... So I purchased a laptop cooling pad ...

Me too. One for each of my 4 HD300's that are in service. Keeps them completely cool and seemed like very cheap insurance.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by wayner

You could be right. I haven't studied this too closely but it seems to me that the HD300 gets hotter than the HD200.

The reason why the HD300 gets hotter is because the aluminium case itself is the heat-sink as opposite of the HD200 which isn't, so some form of hot surface is expected.

I reckon that when the HD300 is running so hot that cannot be touched is when the heat-sink is not properly mounted or the thermal paste is defective. As the HD300 are now out of warranty opening the case doesn't matter any more so you might be able to fix it properly.

One of the factor contributing to shorten the life-cycle of any piece of electronics is high temperature and anything above 65-70ºC is just a killer.

Hope it helps
Eddy

[KeithAbbott]

Anybody try drilling small venting holes in the top of the case? That would be a low-cost, silent solution to keep the innards cool. If you're careful how you space the holes, it might not ruin the look of the unit too much...

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

Anybody try drilling small venting holes in the top of the case? That would be a low-cost, silent solution to keep the innards cool. If you're careful how you space the holes, it might not ruin the look of the unit too much...

I was wondering this myself. I did this once, a decade ago, to one of those RCA-to-USB gadgets (for converting VHS tapes to DVD) that got really hot. It worked... Or at least the unit never failed. My HD300s are up high where you can't see the top of them anyway....