• The forum software that supports hummy.tv has been upgraded to XenForo 2.3!

    Please bear with us as we continue to tweak things, and feel free to post any questions, issues or suggestions in the upgrade thread.

Random switching on of FVP-5000T

D

daddybear

New Member
Good Morning All

I am a new user of the FVP-5000T and have now got the box installed and connected and it seems to be functioning correctly but please can I have advice on one issue?

The box occasionally and randomly seems to switch itself on from standby ( red light on front turns blue ) but it is not scheduled to record at that time and checking via the TV shows no activity on the box either record or playback. Checking later does not show any new recordings done during that time.

Is this usual behaviour for some reason or is there something amiss?

Hope I have explained it properly.

Regards,

Roy.
 
meadfoot said:
Have you got the Auto Power Down set?
Under System Settings/Power Management - Page 27 of manual
Click to expand...
daddybear was asking about the FVP powering on. Auto Power Down works the other way and powers the box down.

daddybear said:
The box occasionally and randomly seems to switch itself on from standby ( red light on front turns blue ) but it is not scheduled to record at that time and checking via the TV shows no activity on the box either record or playback. Checking later does not show any new recordings done during that time.

Is this usual behaviour for some reason or is there something amiss?
Click to expand...
There have been posts on-line like this going back some years now. I don't own a FVP, as I quickly got rid of mine after trying one, but as yours is an old complaint perhaps there is some improvement in a more recent software version, (I'm just speculating here). Are you on the latest version? The latest version is UKTFAE 1.03.53.
 
I'm still guessing here.

Is this a second hand FVP? Have you reset it to defaults?

A very slim possibility is it is CEC related but I don't recall that helping when others have bought the same topic up for the FVP.
Have you tried turning CEC off on the TV for the connected HDMI socket?
 
Luke

FVP is brand new - set up straight from box.

My TV is not a smart TV ( Samsung T32E310EW ) and I can't find the CEC equivalent (Anynet+).

The only variation in connectivity that I have is that the HDMI port on the TV is shared between the Humax and a Fire TV stick - but they are controlled individually by an HDMI switch. However, this problem first occurred when I had the Humax initially set up on a spare room TV while I copied recordings from my 2000T and there was no Fire stick involved then, so probably that isn't at fault - just thought I'd mention it.
 
daddybear said:
The box occasionally and randomly seems to switch itself on from standby ( red light on front turns blue ) but it is not scheduled to record at that time and checking via the TV shows no activity on the box either record or playback. Checking later does not show any new recordings done during that time.
Click to expand...
I don't see this happening on my FVP-5000T. Do you have a power on or power off timer set?
 
IF you have the media server switched (I think that's what it is) on it will start itself up at set times, but from what I remember it doesn't wake it fully i.e. blue light. I got fed up with mine constantly swtiching on so turned it off pretty quickly.
 
Probably will not apply here, but I have a recollection of a few reports in the early days of the 5000T of it switching on in response to button presses on remotes for completely different devices.
 
A1944 said:
Probably will not apply here, but I have a recollection of a few reports in the early days of the 5000T of it switching on in response to button presses on remotes for completely different devices.
Click to expand...
Mine does that. I now choose to leave it switched on - mainly because it has a habit of crashing when first switching on, but also because if I don’t it switches on in the middle of the night making lots of noisy disk access. The media server settings don’t appear to make any difference on my box. The server works when the box is on and doesn’t when the box is in standby irrespective of any server time settings.
 
A1944 said:
Probably will not apply here, but I have a recollection of a few reports in the early days of the 5000T of it switching on in response to button presses on remotes for completely different devices.
Click to expand...
Hello A1944
I have followed some of those early threads and done a lot of what is suggested there - with no lasting improvement - the only difference I have in my set up is an external HDD permanently plugged into the USB socket. This is holding all the unwatched recordings from my previous 2000T box which I copied before moving to the 5000T and which I now watch as required via the 5000T - don't know if this is having any effect, but I haven't yet done any checks with it disconnected. That should be next I suppose.


EEPhil said:
Mine does that. I now choose to leave it switched on
Click to expand...
Thanks EEPhil
Don't really want to leave mine on all night - don't know why really!!
Sorry, don't understand what you mean when you talk about "media server settings" - bit above my puny computer head I'm afraid !
 
daddybear said:
Don't really want to leave mine on all night - don't know why really!!
Click to expand...
  • Cons: power consumption, noise

  • Pros: reliability, availability
The additional longevity of the HDD compensates for the additional cost of electricity, plus it contributes to the heating!
 
daddybear said:
How come it lasts longer if it is switched on a lot more ?
Click to expand...
To expand on prpr: thermal and (to a lesser extent) voltage stress cycling. To put it simply, materials expand when they are warm, and contract when they are cool. Different materials expand at different rates, so where two materials are joined together the differential expansion results in stress. Repeated application and removal of stress eventually results in a crack and failure of the mechanical bond, and if that bond is critical to the electrical circuit (eg between a component and the PCB) then the circuit fails.

I'm sure I don't have to explain that active electronics dissipates heat as a waste product, ie if it's turned on it will be warmer than ambient... and then turning it off allows the unit to return to ambient. This is thermal cycling. Leaving it on all the time reduces the cycling.

Then voltage stress might occur in high-voltage systems such as the mains PSU, but I think that's less of a "thing" if the FVP-5000T has a wall wart rather than a built-in PSU. Nonetheless, capacitors on the main PCB will be charging up setting up a voltage stress across their dielectric layer, and the voltage gaps in ICs are incredibly small.

And finally there's the start-up mechanical stress on moving parts such as fans and HDDs.
 
Black Hole said:
To expand on prpr: thermal and (to a lesser extent) voltage stress cycling. T
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation - just as well that it is OK to leave the box switched on as it has now started to remain on (blue front light) after completing a scheduled recording !!
Recorded a 1 hour programme last night on More 4 from 9pm to 10pm and the box was still switched on at 11.30pm bedtime. Nothing else was happening or scheduled so I just switched it off.
I had read in some previous threads that it was a good idea to wake it up for a short time each morning (using Power on/off) to get it to refresh the epg and so I did that this morning 7-7.30 and I will do a few check recordings through the day to see what happens.
I don't know what to make of this box - having had a 9300 in 2011 and then a 2000T since 2015 with no issues (except a temporary sound blip with the 9300 once) now with this 5000T I have had problems and only had it about 3 weeks. Definitely suffering some "buyers remorse" !!
 
prpr said:
Things usually fail when turned on.
Click to expand...
Agreed.

Failures can also happen in some rare instances when they are turned Off! In one of my 1980s design prototypes (300 Watt linear lab PSU) the mains transformer primary was failing with a short circuit after just a few weeks.

I asked the transformer manufacturer about it and he pointed out it used a high-efficiency low-loss core material designed to run much cooler under continuous load, BUT it was then also a more efficient emulator of a car ignition coil when the mains was removed. The winding was rated at more than 2KV breakdown, but the spike I measured generated by the primary was about 8KV!
The solution was trivial, we just added a 500V MOV directly across the primary to soak up the switch-off spike. As far as I know all of those lab PSUs are still in service.

These days with switch-mode mains PSUs being the simplest cheapest and most reliable solutions, that particular problem vanishes, but as outlined by BH a whole load of others can arise, fortunately not normally associated with switch-off.
 
RichFX said:
Failures can also happen in some rare instances when they are turned Off!
Click to expand...
I nearly added "or off" on the end, but then I thought how can you tell, until you try switching on again and find it doesn't work? So I left it out for simplicity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top