What To Do with a Dead or Unwanted HDR-FOX, HD-FOX, or DTR-T1000/1010

everthewatcher said:
Possibly a combination of the 2TB disk and the description?
Click to expand...
I guess a relatively new disc is of some value. Still seems to be available on Amazon, so not really scarcity value.
Full description and good pictures always help too. I'd almost never buy an item with a couple of fuzzy photos and a one line description. OTOH some people may not buy my stuff because TLDR. (Though I sold a suitcase recently with similar detail and that also went for more than expected, so I think I'll keep on as I am.)

Also having owned from new and knowing the history may help. Something picked up from charity or whatever is always going to have a ? on it, whether that's reasonable or not.
 
Does anyone have a good idea of general Humax HDR-FOX reliability these days?

My mother's HDR-FOX has just seemingly bitten the dust with a crash/reboot loop. Having followed the suggested diagnostics and disconnected the drive (data & power) there is no change. If it was like our old Topfields I'd just switch out the caps and it would be running again for a few more years, but I've not seen any common Humax revival stories so it seems like it's time to either to get her a replacement Humax and hope it lasts or else encouraging her to use Chromecast and the Freeview apps instead. Trouble is those apps are just plain clunky to use, compared to the Humax' easy navigation, not to mention having to endure the adverts.

The flip side though is that this is her third Humax in 3y with the previous ones biting the dust with intermittent reset/rescan channel prompts (despite trying the flash reset process) so am I just going to perpetuate the unreliability history? By contrast my Humax seems to run fine so far, with the odd lock-up every few months.
 
mr-b said:
The flip side though is that this is her third Humax in 3y with the previous ones biting the dust
Click to expand...
If these are all FOXs then reliability will be questionable. They are all old.
So if you get her another FOX then it might well die soon.

We have had an Aura for a couple of years and although it has some quirks you need to get used to, or in some cases find the setting to change it, it's been reliable.
 
The problem with the likes of mothers is that they turn things off. If left on, rather than being turned on as and when required, things last longer.
 
Black Hole said:
The problem with the likes of mothers is that they turn things off. If left on, rather than being turned on as and when required, things last longer.
Click to expand...
Middle ground is to use the timer. The in-use one here is on at 5pm, off at midnight with autodecrypt etc. scheduled from 11pm when I've normally turned in..
 
I do the same as @everthewatcher and use a timer to turn off the power to my boxes from 1am until 6pm.

My main reasoning being that electrolytic capacitors, having a limited working lifespan (The 4.7uF being a case we are aware of), will be the components most likely to fail 1st from power on hours, especially those subjected to the higher frequencies in the power supply(ies). So anything I can do to extend their life is good as far as I am concerned.
I, from personal experience, have no concerns about power cycling the silicon components.
It also means I am unlikely to suffer from the problem of a frozen/crashed unit.
 
Stummery said:
My main reasoning being that electrolytic capacitors, having a limited working lifespan (The 4.7uF being a case we are aware of), will be the components most likely to fail 1st from power on hours, especially those subjected to the higher frequencies in the power supply(ies). So anything I can do to extend their life is good as far as I am concerned.
Click to expand...
That's a fallacy. The electrolytic capacitors have a limited lifespan on or off.

Stummery said:
I, from personal experience, have no concerns about power cycling the silicon components.
Click to expand...
It's not the silicon that's the problem, it's the mechanical interfaces between them, and any mechanisms. The repeated expansion and contraction, however slight, creates fatigue.

What can I tell you? Four units in continuous use for well over a decade with no hard failures (including the HDDs).

Stummery said:
It also means I am unlikely to suffer from the problem of a frozen/crashed unit.
Click to expand...
That much is true, or at least the problem will be limited to the period until the next reboot. However, you can also achieve that with a timer interruption of a few seconds without incurring temperature cycling (caused by extended power interruptions).
 
Stummery said:
The 4.7uF being a case we are aware of
Click to expand...
I keep meaning to have a serious look at what that that cap actually doing in this cct but have never got around to it - at one point I had the bits from the YouView version set up but they met with something obeying the laws of gravity during a crap-clearing session.

It has an unstressed life so has no reason for to fail. I'm wondering whatever timing/glitch suppressing it's doing the 4.7u value may marginal so if it falls even slightly we get the fault.
 
everthewatcher said:
It has an unstressed life so has no reason for to fail. I'm wondering whatever timing/glitch suppressing it's doing the 4.7u value may marginal so if it falls even slightly we get the fault.
Click to expand...
It's in a soft-start circuit across a resistor, and if it goes leaky the potential divider doesn't reach the required voltage soon enough or at all. Then the SoC detects a fault and restarts...

It's not a question of a hard life; in this particular circuit going a bit leaky causes a malfunction whereas other situations (such as a decoupler) it wouldn't matter too much. Electrolytics degrade whether there are volts across them or not (they can be abused with excessive AC current, but the designer shouldn't use them that way). Indeed, I have seen specifications where longevity is only guaranteed if the capacitor is kept polarised – ie with volts on it – rather than on the shelf.
 
I don't like doing this but it seems necessary.

I did a degree in Electrical and Electronic engineering, most of my income over the years has been from commercial electronic product design, employed then self-employed. I gained a reputation for finding and solving issues in existing designs/products and was twice head-hunted for this reason.

I don't need the lecture.
 
It wasn't a lecture, it was a statement of fact. I am also an electronics engineer, but not a mind reader! You can disagree, but there's no need nor call to be touchy.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top