reformat of Philips DSR-704 (DIRECTV receiver/dvr)

beltz97 · 12-07-2009, 11:30 AM

hi - i have a Philips DSR-704 that is a couple yrs old now. it's worked fine up until recently. the symptons i notice:
1) on playback: intermittingly it will freeze up (sometimes w/ pixelation, sometimes not)...for 15, 30 sec or so at a time, repeatedly...like it's in a "bad" spot of the drive
2) on viewing live tv: intermittingly it will pixelate noticably

**i've noticed the signal strength to be usually 93 or more on 1 tuner and 89 or more on the 2nd tuner.

i called directv and they told me i needed to reformat the drive....they said if i turn the unit off (unplug it) for 2 hrs...that when i plugged it back in i would see an option to reformat it....

but that was NOT the case

anyone know how to reformat this unit? (w/o having to pull out the drive - i.e. thru the menu or some button on it??)

Thanks

John T Smith · 12-07-2009, 12:52 PM

Somewhere in the menu, a clear and delete all

beltz97 · 12-07-2009, 01:20 PM

ok i'll have to take a closer look, have never came across this b4.

i have a hard time believing this will fix anything....

beltz97 · 12-07-2009, 01:20 PM

thanks for the info

stevel · 12-07-2009, 01:28 PM

It's under "Restart the recorder" in System Settings or something like that. This is NOT a reformat, but rather a clearing of the Media File System. But I share your doubt that it will fix anything. The symptoms are of a disk going bad.

John T Smith · 12-07-2009, 04:26 PM

If you do need to replace the drive, and you have two USB ports on your computer, this product will clone the drive to a new one, and will even make additional space available if you buy a larger hard drive

http://mfslive.org/winmfs/

I have cloned/enlarged several 80Gig drives to new 320Gig drives... just be sure you buy IDE drives, not SATA drives

catocony · 12-07-2009, 05:15 PM

Sounds like possibly a bad tuner. Is it happening on both tuners? If so, it's a hard drive. If not, then it's probably a tuner.

Sea bass · 12-17-2009, 09:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevel

It's under "Restart the recorder" in System Settings or something like that. This is NOT a reformat, but rather a clearing of the Media File System. But I share your doubt that it will fix anything. The symptoms are of a disk going bad.

Definite bad drive...I had this happen 6 months ago and again tonight. Just ordered a new drive...