Technical Help Please

[Petrushka]

I have just had a Samsung Smart TV model UE40D5520 but my TV engineer says that my 2005 Panasonic DVD recorder DMR-EH50 doesn't recognise the stations and hence cannot record from the TV though it plays DVD's fine. My engineer recommends a Humax hard drive recorder. Can any of you boffins out there say if this is correct and if so recommend a decent Humax?

In addition, just to pile on the cost, the TV will not connect to my rather ancient Technics amplifier as I need a digital optical input and phono sockets seem to be yesterday's thing. Again, is this correct? If it is what is my best option?

Problem would seem to be that I have a state of the art TV with ancient connections. Johnb, Dave 2002, Bryn etc, what is one to do?

[Norfolk Born]

I rent my TV/PVR equipment, which includes a Humax Foxsat-HDR/1TB, which gives me 250/500 hours SD/HD recording capacity. I've had no problems whatever.

[Nick Armstrong]

I decided against Humax - I wanted two things: the ability to receive the HD freeview stations (which the Humax models can do) and the ability to edit / split titles recorded to the hard drive so if necessary, I can just retain small parts of a programme - to take the latest and relevant example, I've split last night's BBC4 proms miscellany, deleted the parts I don't want to keep, so I just have the Rozhdestvensky 'Nimrod' retained on the hard drive.

The Humax can't do that, and it was the defining detail for me. I opted for the Samsung D8900 http://www.techradar.com/reviews/aud...1007245/review - it is also a blu-ray player, and connects to the internet so can play youtube clips and iPlayer progs: but then your Samsung smart TV can do that all on its own, I imagine.

[Petrushka]

I have, as you say, the capability to play youtube and i-player on the smart TV. One of the best features on the Panasonic was the ability to edit in the way you mention, the downside being that it was DVD RAM only so I have stacks of those discs. Can the Samsung D8900 cope with them?

The TV engineer was dismissive of Panasonic and pushed Humax big-time but I have always found them highly reliable products.

[Nick Armstrong]

I have, as you say, the capability to play youtube and i-player on the smart TV. One of the best features on the Panasonic was the ability to edit in the way you mention, the downside being that it was DVD RAM only so I have stacks of those discs. Can the Samsung D8900 cope with them?

The TV engineer was dismissive of Panasonic and pushed Humax big-time but I have always found them highly reliable products.

I'm with you there too, Petrushka... but I still have the Panasonic DVD recorder (and those stacks of DVD RAM - in fact, not that many...) because no, the Samsung can't cope with them. I think you are tied to Panasonic for those Your TV should have sufficient inputs to mean that you could connect both, if you have room under the old telly. Then the DVDs aren't wasted...

But do watch that edit / split facilty. I could only find 1 or 2 PVRs which can do that - vital for efficient archiving, editing out of adverts and trailers, gushing intros to proms performances etc etc.

Another annoyance with the Samsung (I suspect in common with most others, for copyright reasons) is that material on the hard drive can't be archived to any other medium. So you can't back up the contents of the hard drive to the computer, or an external hard drive. My fear is that the unit fails, and then everything on the 1TB hard drive is lost...

[Petrushka]

I'm with you there too, Petrushka... but I still have the Panasonic DVD recorder (and those stacks of DVD RAM - in fact, not that many...) because no, the Samsung can't cope with them. I think you are tied to Panasonic for those Your TV should have sufficient inputs to mean that you could connect both, if you have room under the old telly. Then the DVDs aren't wasted...

But do watch that edit / split facilty. I could only find 1 or 2 PVRs which can do that - vital for efficient archiving, editing out of adverts and trailers, gushing intros to proms performances etc etc.

Another annoyance with the Samsung (I suspect in common with most others, for copyright reasons) is that material on the hard drive can't be archived to any other medium. So you can't back up the contents of the hard drive to the computer, or an external hard drive. My fear is that the unit fails, and then everything on the 1TB hard drive is lost...

Presumably then, that means that I could not transfer from the Samsung to DVD or (in the case of R3 concerts) to CD? I would want to keep, for example, Proms I'd attended and such like. Every hard drive eventually fails so that's a concern.

[Nick Armstrong]

Presumably then, that means that I could not transfer from the Samsung to DVD or (in the case of R3 concerts) to CD? I would want to keep, for example, Proms I'd attended and such like. Every hard drive eventually fails so that's a concern.

Exactly

If you (or anyone else!) find a PVR-hard drive recorder which does HiDef programmes, has a 'partial edit / split' facility, and enables material recorded on the hard drive to be saved to DVD or an external hard-drive: do please let me know!!!

[Petrushka]

Exactly

If you (or anyone else!) find a PVR-hard drive recorder which does HiDef programmes, has a 'partial edit / split' facility, and enables material recorded on the hard drive to be saved to DVD or an external hard-drive: do please let me know!!!

I can see the attraction with PVR hard drive recorders but it seems to me to create more problems than it solves. That ability to transfer to disc is a crucial one and I may be better off looking for an upgrade to the Panasonic which can cope with the TV. It can be a costly business upgrading every 5 years or so.

[Bryn]

Just before last Yuletide I treated myself to a Panasonic DMR-BWT700 HD hard disc/Bku-ray/DVD recorder with built in Freeview tuners (two of them). It cost me £375 including p&p but it can now be found for somewhat less (best I have seen is £339 + p&p). It is pretty versatile but handles only a limited range of codecs via the USB or SD inputs. As a hard disc recorder with HD resolution it works well.

[Petrushka]

Just before last Yuletide I treated myself to a Panasonic DMR-BWT700 HD hard disc/Bku-ray/DVD recorder with built in Freeview tuners (two of them). It cost me £375 including p&p but it can now be found for somewhat less (best I have seen is £339 + p&p). It is pretty versatile but handles only a limited range of codecs via the USB or SD inputs. As a hard disc recorder with HD resolution it works well.

I've been looking at the Panasonic DMR-EX83 but both of these look pretty good. What about the connection to the amplifier? I am loathe to upgrade my Technics at present what with the inevitable budgetary constraints. Does the DVD support phono plugs??

[Bryn]

I've been looking at the Panasonic DMR-EX83 but both of these look pretty good. What about the connection to the amplifier? I am loathe to upgrade my Technics at present what with the inevitable budgetary constraints. Does the DVD support phono plugs??

It has phono out for video and audio (left and right), plus S/PDIF Coax and Optical, SCART, and HDMI. I use the HDMI but get fed up with the way all HDMI enabled equipment I have encountered cannot handle the switching on of the television it is connected to without interrupting playback. Damn it!. I don't want the television to be guzzling energy while I am playing back a CD or audio DVD, but if I want to navigate, it has to be on, and switching it on means a brief temporary loss of playback signal. It's not just the Panasonic, it's every HDMI connected set-up I have encountered.

[Oh, it also plays 3D Blu-rays, but that's a technology that's too immature for me to bother with as yet.]

[mw963]

Have you contacted Panasonic support Petrushka? You say that "the Panasonic doesn't recognise the stations" and I'm guessing that yours may have done what one of ours did a couple of years ago, namely to miss an over-the-air software update connected with the way station details are configured.

In our case Panasonic sent us a disc with the new software on, which when inserted in the machine updated everything within about 10 minutes, and allowed the machine to work again.

Have a look on the internet (I assume from your post that that is possible) and you should find a help page for Panasonic where you can outline your difficulties.

As to the audio problem, there are devices available that convert optical Toslink or indeed SPDIF back to audio - have a look at

http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/psg03497/audio-converter-optical-coax-to/dp/AV1997506?Ntt=AV1997506

which takes your TV digital audio ouptut (via a suitable cable, you need to determine if it's an optical or electrical ouptut) and allows you then to use phono leads to connect to your amplifier.

As to your DVD-RAMs, and assuming you draw a blank with Panasonic, there are certain DVD computer readers which will play them; I only found this out by accident but I have a Samsung slimline external DVD writer (model SE-S084 - it connects to a computer with USB and is designed in part for people with failed on-board DVD writers so that one can still create discs without changing the original writer in the machine) and it will - after a certain amount of whirring - play DVD-RAMs back fine. You can infact copy them to the computer hard disk, and I expect that if one knew enough about computers (which mercifully perhaps I don't) you could even edit the files and then put them back onto conventional DVDs. It's the editing and copying back that I've never achieved.

D'ya know, I've been tempted to join this forum for many years; (I gave up on Radio 3 when the wretched Kenyon vandalised it in 1992 so I have an awful feeling of deja vu when I read the current views on recent changes) and you - Petrushka - have finally bounced me into doing so. Thank you!

[Nick Armstrong]

Have you contacted Panasonic support Petrushka? You say that "the Panasonic doesn't recognise the stations" and I'm guessing that yours may have done what one of ours did a couple of years ago, namely to miss an over-the-air software update connected with the way station details are configured.

In our case Panasonic sent us a disc with the new software on, which when inserted in the machine updated everything within about 10 minutes, and allowed the machine to work again.

Have a look on the internet (I assume from your post that that is possible) and you should find a help page for Panasonic where you can outline your difficulties.

As to the audio problem, there are devices available that convert optical Toslink or indeed SPDIF back to audio - have a look at

http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/psg03497/audio-converter-optical-coax-to/dp/AV1997506?Ntt=AV1997506

which takes your TV digital audio ouptut (via a suitable cable, you need to determine if it's an optical or electrical ouptut) and allows you then to use phono leads to connect to your amplifier.

As to your DVD-RAMs, and assuming you draw a blank with Panasonic, there are certain DVD computer readers which will play them; I only found this out by accident but I have a Samsung slimline external DVD writer (model SE-S084 - it connects to a computer with USB and is designed in part for people with failed on-board DVD writers so that one can still create discs without changing the original writer in the machine) and it will - after a certain amount of whirring - play DVD-RAMs back fine. You can infact copy them to the computer hard disk, and I expect that if one knew enough about computers (which mercifully perhaps I don't) you could even edit the files and then put them back onto conventional DVDs. It's the editing and copying back that I've never achieved.

D'ya know, I've been tempted to join this forum for many years; (I gave up on Radio 3 when the wretched Kenyon vandalised it in 1992 so I have an awful feeling of deja vu when I read the current views on recent changes) and you - Petrushka - have finally bounced me into doing so. Thank you!

Good to read that, mw - and HURRAH for a new member, it's always good to see a first post! As one who also has DVD-RAMs, that's encouraging. On mine, I have a number of treasured old programmes I transferred from VHS (my Panasonic is a combo player with VHS and DVD which can dub from one to the other) and those in particular I'd love to have permanent.

It's more the hard drive conundrum that worries me. The Samsung is infuriating, as I see from the Panasonic PVR mentioned by Bryn that hard-drive content can be copied to a recordable blu-ray disc...

Anyhow, have fun on the Forum!!

[mw963]

Thank you for your warm welcome Caliban!

I can't deny that I have composed "in my head" several versions of a post "denouncing Mr Wright and all his works" but in all honesty existing members here have done a far more adequate job that I ever could.

For four years following Kenyon's vandalism in 1992 I grieved for "my old Radio 3" (which I had listened to since a child of 12, badgering my parents to buy a stereo radio in 1971 (when they were relatively rare and very expensive (£60))) but in 1996 the clouds lifted when it became relatively easy to listen to German classical radio via Astra Digital Radio.

Sadly even the Germans have slid down in terms both of musical and technical quality, but at least I'm seldom aware of when I'm being patronised as my knowledge of the German language is quasi-non existent.

My only visit to Radio 3 since 1992 is a weekly listen to Choral Evensong, and I'm away again by 4.35 pm at the latest.

It's all very sad isn't it.....

Loved the thread about the music they *could* be playing on the morning "shows". Brought back happy memories of Morning Concert, Aubade.

I can even just remember Homeward Bound (often on Medium Wave) and the joy of achingly beautiful bits of music that remained a mystery (although one always tried to guess) until they were back announced by one of the team of oh-so-sadly missed "announcers".

I have a lovely b/w photo of the Pres Team taken in the early 1980s with Cormac (who gave me the photo) in the middle of his gang; (actually I've just checked and he's given the centre spot to Patricia!). Very hard to take the new regime seriously when one is reminded of how things were.

But I digress....

[Petrushka]

mw963,

Thanks very much for your detailed reply and may I echo Caliban's welcome to the forum. Please continue to post!

I have to confess that I hadn't thought of contacting Panasonic support. These TV engineers are far to ready to tell you nothing can be done, try to con you into buying some piece of gadgetry on which they probably earn commission and hit you with a £30 call out charge.

Will get on to it right away.