Humax DRT800 Succesful DVD Replacement

[Mickeygre]

There are a bunch of threads so I decided to post a new one. My DRT800 was failing more and more when I was drying to burn a DVD-R. Sometimes it failed while burning, sometimes it completed but the picture would freeze in spots when viewing it. A disk cleaner would seem to fix the problem for a few disks but the problem was becoming more frequent. As suggested in this forum I purchased a Pioneer-111D (from newegg.com). The installation was very easy and I have never opened my DVR before. I needed to purchase a Torx T10 screwdriver to remove the screws. The only problem I encounter was that the fit was a little tight where the plastic front of the drive past through the metal case. I loosened the front of the unit by removing the 2 torx screws inside the cabinet. I was more comfortable providing a little extra push with the front loosened. In all, it was real simple job. Just replace the drive, and plug in the power supply and IDE Strip, screw it back together. It now works like new. I will probably pick up an extra drive to have around now that I know it works.

[dubluv]

thanx for the headsup. good info to have. glad it was easy. i also found swapping out the oem drive for a 250 GB drive went smoothly also.

[DuPeD]

There are a bunch of threads so I decided to post a new one.
....
I will probably pick up an extra drive to have around now that I know it works.


Very cool that you got the 111D to work. Do you now have capability to burn dual layer discs? That would be worth the price of admission in itself. I have a Pioneer unit, and the 111D drive did not work. The Tivo unit said it had incorrect firmware and would not proceed with accessing the drive. I was just curious how your system reported it.

BTW, the front bezel to the drives usually snap off -molded clips- so you can move it to your new drive if they are a similar manufacturer -like Pioneer-. When you take off the bezel all you see is the edge drive tray itself.

[TydalForce]

I would bet against burning Dual Layer DVDs. The software doesn't know how to do it, so wouldn't take advantage of the larger capacity media.

Which really sucks ;-)

[Alessan]

newegg is out of stock of the Pioneer-111D
Will any other work that anyone is aware of?

[TydalForce]

The 112D apparently works too

Scroll down to the last few posts here: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=336641

[Missmaxx]

Why is it that they can build most Electronics to last virtually forever today, yet things such as these Drives only last a Year or 2 with Light usage? It makes no sense, unless they put the cheapest garbage they can Buy into them!
Not only here, but all over in these Forums the same thing is talked about. Replacing Burners after around 2 Years! You would think for the Price they would improve quality! And Humax seems to have the Most Problems, but I guess that's because they have the most units out there??

Maybe I am missing something, But The 1 thing I could never understand on both of my Units, are why is there a "Standby" Selection in the Menu? What does it do? The Units do not turn off, only the Clock does if you have one! But the H/D continues to Run as usual, The Units go through all regular moves, and all else seems as if you never placed it on "Standby"
What's the Story there?? What is "Standby" for? It just seems to be a useless feature that does very little, too little to even bother including!

[Chester_Lampwick]

Well, I guess opions differ here. I think they use quality drives. I use the same Pioneer DVD drive in my PC and it's excellent. The Seagate hard-drive is almost like the memory card that they give you with a digital camera. It works, but it's too small to be practical so I replaced it while still new. I don't know if it would have lasted two years, but the 300GB I replaced it with will probably be replaced with an even larger drive in two years. I think that the drive never rests like it would in a PC. The machine is always recording (buffering) and therefore accumulates a lot more "hours".

[lafos]

Maybe I am missing something, But The 1 thing I could never understand on both of my Units, are why is there a "Standby" Selection in the Menu? What does it do? The Units do not turn off, only the Clock does if you have one! But the H/D continues to Run as usual, The Units go through all regular moves, and all else seems as if you never placed it on "Standby"
What's the Story there?? What is "Standby" for? It just seems to be a useless feature that does very little, too little to even bother including!

The Standby function depends on your unit. If you have a SA S2 or a Toshiba SD-H400, the RF is passed through when the unit is in Standby, allowing you to watch TV without adding a splitter. I don't own a Humax, so I don't know how they behave.

While in Standby, the unit is still buffering video and will still record as programmed.

[TydalForce]

Putting in Standby does a few things:

- Turns off the front Clock / display
- Indicates to the TiVo "I'm not using you right now; go ahead and record suggestions"
- Powers off the video outputs on the back (people with auto-sensing video switches are fond of this feature)
- On units that can video-out on Chan 3/4 (all but the DVD models, I believe), it turns off the TiVo's RF so the cable signal passes right through

It doesn't turn the TiVo off because then it wouldn't be able to record shows and all the wonderful things that TiVo does for us. It does, however, save a couple watts of power when it turns off the aforementioned displays and outputs.