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MediaStar 920PVR - True Twin Tuner SD PVR


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Is the Mediastar power supply 'repairable' like the Topfield and Beyonwiz equivalents?

This is usually much cheaper than a replacement. There is a repairer on the www.beyonwiz.com.au forum who goes by the name of warkus who may be worth approaching. He comes very highly recommended by his customers.

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hello ... my DT920PVR has stopped working - it won't boot when switched on. This started happening after a recent power outage. Anyone experienced the same?

the hdd is full, but auto-delete is on. The hdd starts spinning, the blue bars on the front glow bright, then fade ... and then the machine goes quiet. Occasionally the tv will display a black screen (over the blue screen background) but it quickly disappears.

MediaStar have suggested the power supply may need replacing. I've removed the hdd, performed a chkdsk - there were a few lost chains - converted them to files and deleted.

Any ideas? format the hdd? I'd prefer not to junk it considering it's been a great machine over the years ...

cheers, Carl

I had the same problem with my Mediastar, didn't realise it was the power supply, tried to sort it out myself including putting in a spare hard drive I had but all to no avail. After much research I finished up getting Panasonic DMR XW380 and am just so much happier than when I had the Mediastar which was a good machine but the XW380 is just superb best piece of recording kit I've ever had. I'm sure your Mediastar will work once the power supply is sorted out but if not .... Just trying to be helpful

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I had the same problem with my Mediastar, didn't realise it was the power supply, tried to sort it out myself including putting in a spare hard drive I had but all to no avail. After much research I finished up getting Panasonic DMR XW380 and am just so much happier than when I had the Mediastar which was a good machine but the XW380 is just superb best piece of recording kit I've ever had. I'm sure your Mediastar will work once the power supply is sorted out but if not .... Just trying to be helpful

Thanks for that.

I upgraded to a Mediastar HD8000T some time ago - great machine too. The DT920PVR was only recording ABC2 for the kids every day, so I'll just repair/replace the power supply ... and if that doesn't work, junk it and buy a cheapie to replace it.

Cheers, Carl

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Thanks for that.

I upgraded to a Mediastar HD8000T some time ago - great machine too. The DT920PVR was only recording ABC2 for the kids every day, so I'll just repair/replace the power supply ... and if that doesn't work, junk it and buy a cheapie to replace it.

Cheers, Carl

power supply replaced, all good ... working again

oh, and no recordings lost either :)

Edited by YellowFever
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  • 2 months later...
1st of March and the date is resetting itself to 4/3/2011. From posts in this thread last year it seems to fix itself after a few days so here's hoping.

Yep, same problem here again, looks like a yearly ritual.

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Yep 1st march seems to throw off the old arion units.. it fixes itself on the 2nd or third.

My old 920 still bears the brunt of my recordings... keeps on soldiering on. With a 920, 8000T and also Foxtel IQ2 HD, I am just about keeping on top of my watching habits.

Which is why its 10.15pm and I am writing up the results of a Domino audit and not watching TV :(

Or even finishing off our website upgrades... almost ready to go... trouble is TVBox is such a small part of our business, hard to get to the time!

Edited by Crusher
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  • 2 weeks later...
Yep, same problem here again, looks like a yearly ritual.

Certainly is - same symptoms: 10am 1st Mar to 10am on the second.

I had written it in the diary, but still managed to miss manually setting up a recording on time, plus it kept trying to add the scheduled items from the 4th on top and so kept coming up with its bug-ridden message box asking me to stop something but not always allowing anything to happen.

The other oddity is that it is getting really stupid about seeing schedule clashes where there are none, and refusing to accept weekly recordings.

In one case it was complaining about a duplicate recording on ABC1 until I shifted off a channel 9 recording, enabled the ABC1 one and then shifted back the channel 9 one.

The even weirder one today - I removed everything from daily Thursday and it still said my recording was duplicated. I then tried it on LCN21 instead of LCN2 (both ABC1 and it was happy.

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  • 6 months later...

So, finally after 5 years, 1 month and 14 days the old mediastar 920 gave out... pitiful really :D

Has anyone ever serviced one of these? It's been doing me well as my primary unit right up until last weekend, so it may be worth a fix if it doesn't cost to much to maintain it as a second unit. (I think it's time to go HD :o )

Symptoms are:

On start up, the blue on unit display lights up "- - - -" brightly, the harddisk spins up, then the display dims, starts to do its scroll on the front display, very briefly displays initilising hdd as it would normally do (a flash on screen), then the TV goes dark, hdd spins down, and thats it with the front display stops on the second bar from the left "_ - _ _"

The HDD is fine, it works for a long time (hours) on a PC and has no errors, the ide cable also works (took it with the drive)

another hdd does not work either.

The unit will not come alive without a HDD attached to do a factory reset from the menus (as suggested by OPAC tech). Just standby red light, signal green light, nothing on screen.

Nothing looks out of place on the power or motherboards, no bulging or leaked capacitors that i can see either.

Other than that I'm not much of electronics tech so I hope that may be diagnostic to someone who knows more about these than I do.

Part B would also be does anyone know someone in Perth who would take a look at it? Postage alone would probably make it not worth the service...

Part C would be, after your Mediastar 920 what did you buy next and were you happy? :)

I did consider whether to open a new topic or not... hopefully a few of the people who used to (still do?) use the mediastar 920 will get this...

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So, finally after 5 years, 1 month and 14 days the old mediastar 920 gave out... pitiful really :D

...

On start up, the blue on unit display lights up "- - - -" brightly, the harddisk spins up, then the display dims, starts to do its scroll on the front display, very briefly displays initilising hdd as it would normally do (a flash on screen), then the TV goes dark, hdd spins down, and thats it with the front display stops on the second bar from the left "_ - _ _"

...

Part B would also be does anyone know someone in Perth who would take a look at it? Postage alone would probably make it not worth the service...

Part C would be, after your Mediastar 920 what did you buy next and were you happy? :)

Your description matches exactly the way my 920 failed last December ... it's the power supply. I had it replaced for $99 by MediaStar in Ingleburn, Sydney. From memory I could have bought the replacement PS for $80 (?) and installed it myself - it didn't look too hard to do. Ever since, the 920 has been recording every day without a problem ...

Part B ... why not get the power supply sent to you & find someone to install it? I seem to recall it didn't require a soldering iron, just a few screwdrivers ...

Part C ... I bought a 1TB MediaStar 8000T. Very happy with it, but I've had a few issues with recordings (see current 8000T thread). Also, the menu system / playback controls take a little time to get use to (compared to the 920) - but it works well.

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Your description matches exactly the way my 920 failed last December ... it's the power supply. I had it replaced for $99 by MediaStar in Ingleburn, Sydney. From memory I could have bought the replacement PS for $80 (?) and installed it myself - it didn't look too hard to do. Ever since, the 920 has been recording every day without a problem ...

Part B ... why not get the power supply sent to you & find someone to install it? I seem to recall it didn't require a soldering iron, just a few screwdrivers ...

Thanks! this is this sort of answer I was hoping for... Have been quoted $110 for the power supply part shipped... but they have strongly suggested (rightly so) that i get someone to verify that the fault lies in the power supply as there is no refunds on parts....

So part D becomes, how do i test the supply? I'm quite aware of the exposed high voltage parts , so proposing pulling the supply cables plug off the motherboard and covering the supply itself while probing with a volt meter across what should be the low-voltage cables quite conveniently labelled with their voltage and ground pins... Or is that not a good idea?

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So part D becomes, how do i test the supply?

sorry mate, can't help you there ... but if it does help make the decision any easier - I described the fault over the phone EXACTLY as you have typed it above and the MediaStar technician's immediate response was "power supply". When I took the machine in he hooked it up to a tv, confirmed what I had described and again said "power supply". That to me was their "verification", so I'd be very confident of ordering the part and installing it.

As I've typed above as well, it's been recording daily to a completely full hdd (with auto-delete enabled ... my daughter's ABC Kids morning and afternoon addiction over-writing itself) and it hasn't missed a beat since. Oh yeah, there was NOTHING wrong with the recordings on the hdd when it failed - I assumed I had lost the lot, but no ...

Carl

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So, finally after 5 years, 1 month and 14 days the old mediastar 920 gave out... pitiful really :D

Has anyone ever serviced one of these? It's been doing me well as my primary unit right up until last weekend, so it may be worth a fix if it doesn't cost to much to maintain it as a second unit. (I think it's time to go HD :o )

Symptoms are:

On start up, the blue on unit display lights up "- - - -" brightly, the harddisk spins up, then the display dims, starts to do its scroll on the front display, very briefly displays initilising hdd as it would normally do (a flash on screen), then the TV goes dark, hdd spins down, and thats it with the front display stops on the second bar from the left "_ - _ _"

The HDD is fine, it works for a long time (hours) on a PC and has no errors, the ide cable also works (took it with the drive)

another hdd does not work either.

The unit will not come alive without a HDD attached to do a factory reset from the menus (as suggested by OPAC tech). Just standby red light, signal green light, nothing on screen.

Nothing looks out of place on the power or motherboards, no bulging or leaked capacitors that i can see either.

Other than that I'm not much of electronics tech so I hope that may be diagnostic to someone who knows more about these than I do.

Part B would also be does anyone know someone in Perth who would take a look at it? Postage alone would probably make it not worth the service...

Part C would be, after your Mediastar 920 what did you buy next and were you happy? :)

I did consider whether to open a new topic or not... hopefully a few of the people who used to (still do?) use the mediastar 920 will get this...

Hi it's been a long time since I've been on here. I actually came across this thread by accident. I had the same thing happen to my 920. It's currently being fixed and I pick it up tomorrow.

It's only going to cost $69 for the repair, I'll find out tomorrow what the exact problem was. I'm pretty sure it will be a power supply problem though.

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  • 5 months later...

Mine just died on the weekend and is totally dead with no sign of life. Opened it up and on power supply board IC101 has a nice hole in it and R106 looks fried. Anybody know what those parts are as I can't read them. Was only using it to record that extra 3rd channel so no great loss as have a spare digicrystal 9000 around that i fixed the capacitors in.

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