As they would normally consume only a few watts,I wouldn’t expect  domestic DVD recorder/players to need fans. I’d unplug it before it possibly catches fire.

That’s a big killer of electronic gear, humidity and dust forming nice sludge trails on circuit boards. Vacuuming is good. Recently I had an amplifier that died. Took it to a repair place (rare thing these days) and all he did was brush on some kind of CRC circuit board cleaner to clean off the solidified dust on the boards. Works as good as new now.

I’m guessing dust build up around the fan vents.
Yes there is a fan, as a search of the service manual will testify.
It’s available here, and lists error codes for overheating as well
https://elektrotanya.com/panasonic_dmr-bwt460gn_dmr-bwt760gn.pdf/download.html

I should probably add to do a virus/malware scan before opening the pdf.

Bill

Hi Brian, I have a Freesat recorder, but of course they won’t record onto a DVD disc, but they do come with different hard drive capacities for recording TV programmes, my TV will also record onto a USB stick, but it will only playback on the TV it’s recorded on, and so I can’t use that stick on my other TV in another room, but that one will also record onto a USB stick.

Regards Nick.

At first sight this should have been a straightforward disk-swap:

.

.

… but Panasonic plays a different game 🙁

MichaelG.

It’s not just Panasonic; I had a network storage box in which the hard drive died, just out of warranty.
My plan was just to replace the HDD, but the firmware to run the box resided on the dead HDD.
The manufacturer refused to let me have a copy of the firmware to repair the box, and also refused to replace the HDD themselves.
I can’t remember the make now, but it was well regarded at the time; Seagate possibly.

Bill

I have a Panasonic freeview TV and DVD recorder and a Panasonic freesat TV and blueray recorder which have cooling fans in the rear. You should shine a light through the round segmented air inlet in yours to see if the fan still turns and how much fluff there is on the blades. The fan size looks like a common smaller one available on computer websites. When I got the blueray, mainly because my hearing is poor and I like subtitles which are not always included on DVD’s, I tried swopping the hard drives but failed even though the Blueray machine has a “format” option. The only way to transfer some irreplacable recordings was to put them onto DVD’s and then record them onto the blueray’s HDD.

There appears to be only one make of freesat recorder box available in UK. I’ve got one,it’s not a patch on my old Humax. According to our local retailer freesat is on its way out in favour of interweb tv

My ancient Humax is failing for the opposite reason – too cold!  I rarely run the central heating because I spend most time working in one room.   12°C as I type this watching TV, and at that temperature the Humax takes 3 or 4 attempts to start.  I guess the hard drive is sticky.

As it’s so old – the remote wore out 18 months ago – I replaced it with a Manhattan.  Bit different, and I’m not entirely used to it yet.  Several improvements, and a few irritations, but it does the job.

The physical discs are almost certainly standard.  Not so the firmware loaded on them, which also has to be replicated, and the disc format might be proprietary too.  Plus various restrictions, like encryption, intended to make it difficult to rip films – copyright.  Hard to repair.  Gone are the days when having a few basic practical skills could get most stuff going again.  It will end in tears – not sustainable.

🙁

Dave

I used to love my Topfield TF5800 PVR – totally fixable, upgradable and moddable – but it got overtaken by HDTV so I built a small PC using Win 10 with a quad tuner card and a Blu-Ray drive, running NextPVR (free software) for the tuning/recording of Freeview TV, and Kodi (free software) as a front-end media player. Everything you need in one box, the TV just becomes a dumb monitor so no need for a Smart TV.

Rob

Any progress with the box? I did not notice any mention of exactly which component was getting hot or whether the HDD was still working. Try removing the case before the dodgy part cools down. Usually the HDD would fail completely if it got that hot. If you have got a computer, there are free hard disc recovery and cloning programmes which may be able to deal with the Panasonic software running yours, I doubt very much that the HDD has any firmware specific to Panasonic. Try joining the “hardcaps forum”, they have lots of expertese on fixing everything electronic.