Obtain product support for Panasonic DMR-EH50S Progressive Scan DVD Video Recorder with Built-in 100 GB Hard Disk and TV Guide On Screen - Records to.
Hi everyone I've got an older HDD recorder, a Panasonic DMR-EH60 - it's not a high-def recorder, and i've basically no use for it anymore. But i thought i could pull the HDD out of it, and get some use out of this drive. The drive itself is a 200GB Western Digital WD2000 EIDE drive, specific model number WD2000BB-14GUC0.
I've tried it in 3 different computers now, and can't get any of them to detect the drive within the BIOS. I'm part-way through a CompTIA A+ course (with a view to carrying on with CCNA and then MCITP), and my tutor believes it's because it's probably been formatted in a non-standard, i.e not NTFS, kind of file system. He doesn't seem to think that there is any way to reformat the drive, but it just seems such a waste of what would otherwise be a decent 200GB drive, so i thought i'd sign up here and see what you guys thought about it I've tried it with an IDE cable, various jumper settings.
I've also tried it with an EIDE-to-SATA converter via a SATA controller on the motherboard of my own home PC - no joy. There's 2 SATA controllers on this mobo, and both are fine, as both work fine with my boot drive. So i'm at a bit of a loss really - anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance. If you are connecting this drive in a machine that already has a boot volume then you need to set the jumpers on the drive to make it a slave. Also give it a power connection as well.
When you start the machine up does the drive spin up? (You can hear it) Assuming that it is windows you are using - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management Then choose storage followed by disk management If the drive is registering it should appear in the window on the right. BTW it easier to use one of these to test a drive rather than open up your case. If the HDD is not detected by the BIOS then the way it is formatted will have nothing to do with you not being able to see it. The BIOS is only aware of the physical hardware, it has no way of reading the data on the HDD and therefore wont care what file system it is formatted to.
As it is an IDE HDD I would manually set the jumper to make it a slave or master HDD rather than rely on cable select - jumper settings for WD IDE HDD's can be found on page 2 of this pdf - I would say that if the HDD is connected correctly and is not detected by the BIOS then it is most likely faulty. Thanks for the responses guys. I'm using Windows XP Home.
The drive doesn't appear to spin up no matter what type of connection i use, be it IDE, or SATA via the IDE-to-SATA adaptor that i have. I can't hear it, and when i put my hand on it there is no vibration at all. But when i put it back into the Panansonic DMR-EH60, it works fine. If i am using the IDE-to-SATA adaptor to plug it in via a SATA controller, what would i need to set the jumper setting to? It has 'Slave', 'Master with Slave Present', 'Single or Master' and 'CS' jumper settings. I don't have a spare IDE cable, but i'll power-down and use one of the CD-RW or DVD-ROM connections to try it, and set it as Slave via the jumpers.
Maybe also give it another go with the IDE-to-SATA adaptor. Will post how it goes once i'm back up (Yes, that IDE/SATA-to-USB adaptor looks rather handy right at the moment!
Panasonic will not allow you to use the Molex Cable from your PC oder USB/IDE Adapter. It seems like the molex cable in the HDD Recorder delivers a different voltage. Even if you hook up the IDE cable from the PC and the molex cable from the HDD Recorder, then the drive spins, but the PC still won't recognise it. Seems like the only way to get the movies off is to burn 100 DVDs and rip them again. From now on I will never ever again buy a HDD Recorder that does not allow copying to USB or NAS Drive!
Panasonic is being extremely difficult here so that you can't replace the 200GB HDD with a 500GB, as they charged 4x more for the 500GB model, and it would only cost you a couple dollars to upgrade yourself. Dear, I'm having exactly the same problem on exactly the same DVD recorder. I absolutely need to rip off the data from the HDD (it was formatted by mistake).
The HDD is a Samsung HA200JC and appears as a perfectly normal commercial one for PC's. But no way it got detected in my BIOS or an external enclosure. In my BIOS the model is recognized, but it doesn't get the geometry parameters, making it useless.
Has someone meanwhile any idea what's going on? It seems very unlikely Panasonic got custom drives. Therefore I'm reluctant to believe the voltage story. Would they (Panasonic) put other firmware on the disk? If so is that removeable in a reversible way? Desperately seeking for any clues.
I have a Panasonic DMR-EH50 DVD recorder with 100 GB HD that locked up in error mode when I tried to divide a title on it back in January. It's not the 'U99' code I keep reading about, Just says 'An error has occurred, please press enter'. None of the reset procedures would work. Someone in another group said the HD is probably corrupted, so I took it out and got a computer to detect it, so it appears to be still OK. I need to get all the shows off of it before I attempt any reformat. (I think I only have about 25% of the drive filled) I have the TwinRip software which looks like I can copy the whole thing to my computer HD, and a good Hex editor program (Hackman Suite).
Just wondering if any one has done this yet. I read a whole thread similar to this (on an older model DMR) on this forum, but it was 3 years old and I couldn't find any more posts anywhere on the net from the original poster. Just found out I can get all the data off of a Panasonic DMR HD! Using a free hex editor called HxD, I connected the drive to the computer using a IDE to USB adapter cable and then could access it with HxD. Even though a drive letter does NOT show up in the 'My Computer' window, the hex editor shows all attached physical drives when you click on the 'extras' tab and select 'open drive'.
And it will display all data from the first byte to the very end of the 100th gigabyte on the drive. I found out all DVD video files begin with the hex code 000001BA and by doing a search, this string appears at the beginning of every 2KB block, starting at byte no. 23C8800 ( the next 4 bytes may be some kind of indexing, I need the play with that next ) So I just copied exactly 256 MB of hex data from this byte onward, pasting it over a small dummy file and saving it, Then all I had to do is name it as a.mpg file, and it plays fine in any media player. The only problem is that it is fragmented, little bits and pieces from different shows jumbled together.
Out of the 20 or 22 minutes of video, I did get about 15 min from one show in one solid chunk. The video itself is obviously not encrypted in any way, just plain old mpeg format. Exactly the same error has occurred on my Panasonic DMR-EH60. I also have errors occuring on my other Panasonic machines DMR-EH50 and DMR-EH55. According to Panasonic, these errors are caused by Shaw Cable in Edmonton and Calgary Canada, which has been making changes to TVGOS (TV Guide On Screen) to make it work purely digitally. Until recently the TV listing were downloaded over channel 2 in Edmonton as data similar to closed captioning. Apparently, the new 'digital compatible' TVGOS listings are causing memory overflows which are corrupting RAM.
I've got problems on all 3 of my machines. Panasonic told me to be patient and the problems would disappear when TVGOS is working correctly. Shaw has been making changes since last May or June, so the fact that your error occured in January means it could have been caused by corrupted TVGOS listings from a cable company that started to make changes earlier. If only RAM were corrupted, the problem should clear up when TVGOS is working as it should.
Panasonic says it will. However, I don't think the problem will clear up because it appears that the firmware in ROM, and not RAM that was corrupted.
Here is how I found out about this. One of my machines (DMR-EH60) crashed when I was copying a DVD-RAM disk to the hard drive. It went into a state where it says 'Error occurred, Press Enter'. When I press enter, it reboots with the same message. Nothing would get the machine out of this loop.
Panasonic told me I could reset the machine by pressing Power+Stop, which would reset the machine to the factory default setting and erase my hard drive. Since I didn't want to lose the data on my HDD, I sent it to a certified Panasonic repairman. He discovered that the firmware on the main circuit board has been modified. There is no fix other than replacing the circuit board, which costs about $350. He says Power+Stop doesn't work. So my concern is that Shaw Cable's messing around with TVGOS has damaged the firmware on all the Panasonic PVR's in the Edmonton and Calgary area.
Similar damage is probably occuring in the US with other cable systems that use TVGOS. The damaged main boards that need replacing for a huge number of affected PVR's would probably cost millioins of dollars. Do we have a class action law suit?
Panasonic also sent me firmware upgrades for my machines on CD. Would applying the upgrades completely replace the firmware and thereby fix the problems created by TVGOS? I just bought my 3rd Panasonic PVR a month ago. It is a DMR-EH55, and it too has problems. If the firmware has been changed, at least it will be fixed under warranty by Panasonic.
Maybe Panasonic needs to sue Shaw and TVGOS. The new DMR-EH55 hasn't crashed yet in an unrecoverable loop. However, it shows evidence of firmware corruption. When I switch to the DVD drive, the red 'DVD' logo blinks while it is reading, and then the blinking is supposed to stop.
It never stops. Also, when I press the 'Status' button, I'm supposed to get status info on screen and now I get nothing.
I orginally thought TVGOS had overwritten RAM memory, and that caused the corruption. If so, the problem should clear up. But if the firmware in ROM has been corrupted, a new main board may be required. I had errors like these on both my EMR-EH50 and DMR-EH60 machines.
It was the EH60 that went into the unrecoverable loop. Maybe if I had applied a firmware patch to restore the firmware before it when into that loop, it would now be OK. Does anyone know? I'm terrified my EMR-EH50 will do the same. I've reconfigured it to not use TVGOS. That should wipe out all the RAM used my TVGOS. However, if the firware was corrupted, it may still be vulnerable to going into an unrecoverable error loop.
I'm planning up upgrade the firmware and test it thoroughly to make sure the corruption is gone. I won't use TVGOS until I'm sure the problems are solved.
I'd love to hear from others who have discovered they are in this mess too. Hey, I'm in Edmonton and use Shaw Digital Cable. I don't know if this is related but last week my DMR-E85H was dead. I took it in for repair e(Electronic Analyst) and had two bad capacitors replaced - the e85 is notorious for bad caps. When it was fixed, I brought it home and got it setup - except after 5 days (and every possible configuration of connecting to shaw cable). I can't download the TVGuide.
I contacted the repair shop, they said the have heard from a couple clients and their own techs that the guide is not downloading. I contacted Shaw, they said CFRN is changing equipment and may not be sending the guide.
![Panasonic Firmware Download Dmr-eh60 Panasonic Firmware Download Dmr-eh60](http://av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/support/global/cs/dvd/download/eh49/image/eh49_02.jpg)
I called CFRN and the engineer there said there were no issues from their end (although I am not sure we were talking about the same thing). From what I read in this thread, some suspect it may be Shaw in Edmonton that is changing equipment and causing the problems (I thought the shaw support guy on the phone sounded confused.) I find Shaw almost useless when it comes to TVGOS. I have contacted them in the past when I have had trouble (April 2008 I upgraded to a newer all-digital cable terminal and couldn't get the guide, when I went back to the older terminal the guide came back).
One support person actually told me because my equipment wasn't from Shaw they couldn't provide support for the missing signal coming from their end / through their equipment. I don't know what is going on and where the problem originates, so I sent a message to the owners of the TVGOS service - Macrovision at [email protected] on Friday afternoon.
I will wait to see if they reply. I hooked up through the digital cable suing the coax only, RCA in L3 only and I bypassed the digital cable using the coax only - but no guide. Then each time turned off the system and waited at least 12 hours - usually the clock time downloads right away - but got nada.