Canadian TV, Computing and Home Theatre Forums banner
21 - 40 of 101 Posts
Have you measured the voltage in your house yet? Even a cheapo multimeter from Canadian Tire would be enough to tell you if you have either low or high voltage. Do you go through a lot of light bulbs? Losing three components in a short period of time like that would make me very suspicious. Have there been any new buildings put up near you recently? Think about what happened to all those people in Mayfair Place.
 
Just for all you Shaw/PACE users: Our Pace box from Cogeco in Ontario has had eleven hardrive-is-full messages in the few months we have had the box. We were one of the first to have this POS dumped on us. Just a heads up that the problem seems to be with Pace, not your provider. I'm just sayin'.
 
Sailmaker,

I suspect you're right. I've reprogrammed the Harmony remote to keep the PVR on at all times. If this prevents the problem from re-occurring then this may be a simple workaround until Pace comes out with a firmware fix. I was getting this fault about once or twice a week, so I should know pretty soon if this is going to improve the reliability of this PVR.
 
Leaving the power on all the time is a poor way to correct a problem that should never be happening. What is the power consumption at idle and is it higher when the box is active? It could be the equivalent of leaving a 240 watt bulb on 24/7/365. Cogeco csr here in Ontario tried to get that data from their files but no luck. Cogeco does not have the answer to the problem and cannot provide the power data. I have sent an email to PACE but they require me to enter the two words at the bottom of their request6 site. Right. Those words always look like a 2-year-old scratched them with their finger dipped in diaper residue. Anyone????
 
If you value your investment in your electronics, you should have a UPS. I have three, plus a whole house surge protector wired into the Electrical panel...Power for most it seems is taken for granted, but I can promise you it is not as "clean" as it might appear from a consumer POV. Especially bad is if you're outside a major center.

Everybody needs to take steps to protect themselves from the ravages of the consistently damaging power grid.

Having said that, if you're living off grid, you're golden!
 
Leaving the power on all the time is a poor way to correct a problem that should never be happening. What is the power consumption at idle and is it higher when the box is active? It could be the equivalent of leaving a 240 watt bulb on 24/7/365. Cogeco csr here in Ontario tried to get that data from their files but no luck. Cogeco does not have the answer to the problem and cannot provide the power data. I have sent an email to PACE but they require me to enter the two words at the bottom of their request6 site. Right. Those words always look like a 2-year-old scratched them with their finger dipped in diaper residue. Anyone????
The power diff is very small as the box does not actually turn off.
 
Just did a fast calc using 240 watts @10 cents per kwh 24/7/365 and it comes to about $90 per year. I have no intention of paying that or even more as energy costs continue to climb. A Cogeco techy who posts to these pages says the problem has been turned over to PACE. PACE's track record for replying to customers questions is very poor from my personal experience.
 
I am now getting this hard drive full message every three or four days. The most irritating thing is that on two occasions, programs I have set up to record have not recorded because my hard drive reads as being full.

From now on I will leave the PVR power on when I have programs set to record and I am not home to monitor them, however, I agree with previous comments that this is an unacceptable solution. Shaw/Pace had better resolve this issue pronto!
 
accord1999: My guestimate of 240 watts was based on an "educated guess" provided today by a techy at Cogeco. He could not find actual data in his files however. Your figure of 40 watts would give an annual expense of maybe $15 to $20 on the high side. That I can live with. On what did you base your 40 watts? Thanx for your input. sailmaker
 
accord1999: My guestimate of 240 watts was based on an "educated guess" provided today by a techy at Cogeco. He could not find actual data in his files however. Your figure of 40 watts would give an annual expense of maybe $15 to $20 on the high side. That I can live with. On what did you base your 40 watts? Thanx for your input. sailmaker
According to the Motorola DCT6400 Series Installation Manual in the Specifications section, the "Power dissipation" is "40 W nominal at 115 Vac".
 
To add to accord1999 it's true, DVR on and off doesn't really make any power difference. On my APC UPS it only drops about 1 watt according to the power display when shut off vs on. The only difference is the hard drive isn't buffering live TV.
 
The Pace, by default, shuts off the hard drive when in standby mode though. So it would use less than the Motorola.

(At least the TDC777D does)

Which reminds me, not sure if it's been mentioned in here yet, but the Cogeco Pace TDC777D has this same issue.
 
We do have the PACE TDC777D with PVR. We upgraded to digital a few months ago and were expecting the Motorola set top box. Out comes this neater looking box. Cogeco had just started issuing them about 2 days prior so we were one of the first to get this "hard drive full" nonsense. When I first started posting this recurring problem I am sure 99% of readers here thought I was nuts. Since then of course Shaw and Cogeco customers have been going down the same road, over and over and ov..... sailmaker
 
Hey guys, I was searching the internet looking to see if I am the only one with this issue. I see I certainly am not!

I have been on Shaw for years and have been using DCT1200 and 1600 receivers. I subbed to the football package this year and they told me I have to upgrade to this PACE receiver ( I have the 1TB extender). Since I have had this, I have had the 100% full message three times and my receiver has also hung 3 times. I also experience something wierd in that sometimes it records the same program on both receivers so I end up with two copies of the same program. This thing is the most buggy device ever. I still have one of the 1600's and I never have issues with it. Does Shaw not test these things before they send them out?

I notice many people say to just unplug it and all it well. Well I would say that is not a great solution because I loose my guide for most of the day while it re-downloads. This morning when I turned it on and found this message, I unplugged it and now I have no idea what channel my teams are playing on so I had to get a peice of paper and write down the channels as I surfed for them. Not very good service if you ask me!
 
It takes about an hour or two to repopulate the guide in full. If it's taking longer, you may have a connection issue. Best advice is to not turn the box off or put it in standby. Leave it on all the time.
 
21 - 40 of 101 Posts
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top