Is My Box Dead?

dobbo

New Member
I am wondering what a reasonable life expectancy is for a Humax Freesat+ HDR Box. I bought mine very soon after launch so maybe about 2008/2009. It's been fantastic until today when it has suddenly stopped working. When switched off and then back on again it just makes a noise and then stops with the only action being the red power light remaining on. Is it dead? Is 5/6 years a reasonable life expectancy. Like with an old laptop I would imagine any significant expenditure would be money down the drain.
 
A common fault with Humax (and others) boxes is that the smoothing capacitors on the power supply board bulge, leak and subsequently fail. If this is what's wrong with your box, it's not and expensive job to replace them. Even cheaper if you are fairly proficient with a soldering iron. Open it up and have a look for bulging capacitors on the PSU board. There is a picture of the PSU and other info Here CLICK
 
The power supply issue afaik only affects Foxsat-HD models. First thing to check is disconnect the hard drive and see if the box will then boot up.
 
Even cheaper solution. Unless the disk is shot. But there are ways of recovering them if they're not too shot.
@GLT. I was wondering why my HDR hasn't blown its caps yet:)
 
Because the Foxsat-hdr doesn't use the notorious CapXon capacitors found in Thomson Sky boxes and the Foxsat-HD. I have never seen a single case reported on a Foxsat-hdr (Mine dates from late November 2008 - the first batch) and still works fine. A Foxsat-HD from about 2 months previously needed the capacitors replacing a long time ago.
 
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