No Broadcast

[user870]

I have a Sony DVD Recorder RDR-HXD870 which is losing channels.  Running the channel update process only temporarily restores the channels, but they later vanish.

The problem was highlighted by Freeview Channel 986  As the link suggests, this is supposed to be on channel 20 on my television, but as that channel is already occupied by 'Really', the channel actually being used on my television is 986.

As stated above the RDR-HXD870 will show allocate channel 986 as the Drama channel, but it later disappears.  When this happens, any recording settings are treated as 'No Broadcast'.  Incidentally, when I have managed to set a recording session, I also noticed that 'Series Recording' is denied.

Any assistance appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Hi there

It sounds like your picking up another signal from another transmitter.  You may need to contact an aerial technician to see if they can do anything. 

Have you tried manually tuning in the channel?

A couple of web links for you:

http://www.ukfree.tv/transmitters.php

http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/coveragechecker/manual_retuning

http://www.satcure.com/tech/freeview_problems.htm#800

Hope that helps.

Cheers

[rooobb · Accepted solution]

This symptoms may be related also to a known bugs in RDR-HXD series DVD recorder. 

When you say that the channels "later vanish" you mean when you power off the device? If this is the case try the following:

• be sure you have the last firmware installed (1.70)
• hard reset the recorder, pushing stop and poweroff buttons together on the deck (be sure no disk is in the tray)
• unplug from main for 1 minute
• restart and follow the easy setup procedure including the rescanning of the digital channels: once they are found they will remain (at least for some month....)

Resetting the recorder you'll lose any custom setting you made (i.e. HDMI video setting) and any timer. Nothing will be changed in the HDD (so your recorded titles will stay there).

Hope it solves

[user870]

rooobb, I tried your solution and, so far, the offending Freeview Channel 986 hasn't disappeared. I also discovered that 'Series Recording' is now permitted, so perhaps this is a sign that the problem has been cured. I'll leave it for a few days to confirm that this issue has been completely resolved. Should I forget, assume that no further news is good news! My thanks to you and Quinnicus for your ideas.

[rooobb]

Good to know that it seems you solve the problem. Unfortunately there must be some problem in the fw with freeing the recorder memory, so the only solutions is to force a complete clearing (assured by the power detaching since it seems that even if you reset it, the recorder still may "remember" the last wrong configuration.

Don't expect Sony to fix it (the last fw was released 3 years ago and I think there is none anymore that is able or willing to modify it), but if it happens again in the future (symptoms may vary from missing new channel to the recorder stuck in update forever) just redo the procedure.