My Panasonic TV recorder is running hot.

[Brian JohnParticipant @brianjohn93961]

I have a Panasonic TV recorder/DVD player DMR-BWT460 which seems to be running hot. I went to move it the other night and putting my hand under the unit, I found it to be very hot. I could not keep my hand there longer than 5 seconds. Now, I have never noticed this before but I have never previously put my hand there. I don’t think it is normal so I called Panasonic who were not much help at all. I never did get to speak to a technician.

Online sources suggested that the fan could have failed so I decided to pull the unit apart to check the fan. I could not find it ! I removed the top cover and the front and rear panels but no fan that I could see.

1. Where is the fan on these things ?

2. Should it be this hot underneath ?

3. Over the last six months, the volume has dropped quite a bit. Would this be related ?

NOTE : it was on a shelf in a TV cabinet but I have now moved it and raised it 6cm above the top surface of the cabinet to improve air circulation and cooling but this has not made any difference.

NOTE : when I reassembled the unit, there was one screw left over. I pulled it apart again but I could not see where it went. There always seems to be one screw left over !

[Clive Brown 1Participant @clivebrown1]

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.

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

My Panasonic double hard drive 35W unit got hot a few years ago, randomly shutting down. A big vacuum over the cooling slots for 10 minutes fixed it. Still running now.

[cedric 1Participant @cedric]

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.

[john fletcher 1Participant @johnfletcher1]

If you  join Vintage Radio forum (free) a member there will I’m sure, will tell you all about your recorder. But for a start I would go along with what cedric above says.  John

[peak4Participant @peak4]

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

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, my Panasonic DMR-EZ27 DVD recorder has a fan in about a 55mm square casing on the back of it, but my Panasonic Blue ray player doesn’t have any fan.

Regards Nick.

[Brian JohnParticipant @brianjohn93961]

It definitely has a fan as I have a spare part number for it.

It is all clean inside. When I opened it up, I could see that there was no dust anywhere and all the vents were clean. The heat is coming from the hard drive (in the middle of the unit, looking from the top). It is directly under the hard drive that gets hot.

It is very hot here in Cairns right now ; 34 degrees today. So that doesn’t help.

I suspect that the fan is in the DVD player (on the left side, looking from the top) I could see something that COULD BE a fan under the DVD player but I could not work out how to remove it. It is a small white cylinder, about 12mm in diameter) As this is well away from the hard drive I am puzzled as to how this would help much.

I am reading the service manual : abnormal inner temperature should produce an error code (U59) on the front display but I am not getting that.

[Brian JohnParticipant @brianjohn93961]

UPDATE : I just called an electronic technician here in Cairns and he said nobody will touch Panasonic. Their hard drive requires specialized software which only Panasonic have and they will not hand it out to anybody except an authorized technician. There is nobody in Cairns authorized to service their equipment.

What a system and nobody else makes a TV recorder either !

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

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.

[Brian John]

On Brian John Said:

UPDATE : I just called an electronic technician here in Cairns and he said nobody will touch Panasonic. Their hard drive requires specialized software which only Panasonic have and they will not hand it out to anybody except an authorized technician. There is nobody in Cairns authorized to service their equipment.

What a system and nobody else makes a TV recorder either !

I feel your pain, Brian

… We had a very similar response in Sheffield U.K. when the Panasonic HDD recorder failed.

MichaelG.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

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

.

.

 

… but Panasonic plays a different game 🙁

 

MichaelG.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

For the curious …

 

MichaelG.

[peak4Participant @peak4]

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

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, they are wonderful things, until they go wrong, I once had one in a desktop that would start-up Windows, but then it froze, shut it down and waited a short while and gave it another go, same thing happened, I gave the desktop a clout, like you used to do with the old TV years ago, and the hard drive would wake up again, for a while. I ended up putting it into a slave position, and had to keep tapping it every now and then, to save all the data, which took a while to do, and got almost all of it transferred, what was left didn’t matter.

I then had another one sometime later that started Windows up, and just as I went to use it, it just went off, so left that a while and restarted it, and again the same thing happened, turn out there was a chip on the board that was getting hot, so with a splodge of heat transfer compound and a strip 1mm thick copper attached to it, I managed to get all the data of that one. You can see in the photo below the one that was getting hot.

This is an IBM Deskstar with a 20 GB capacity, but I don’t know if it will still work.

Regards Nick.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

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.

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

All hard disk TV recorders with HDMI output have some kind of “keying” between the unit and the hard drive. It’s a requirement of the licence to use HDMI & HDCP. Its so you can’t share copies of recordings. For some you can fit a new drive if yours fails but others are completly locked down.

Robert.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

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

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, Duncan, seems to be plenty of different ones on sale. Freesat Box I had a Humax once didn’t last long passed its warrany period, and just gave up without any warning, I’ve had my Freesat one for several years now without any problems.

Regards Nick.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

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

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

There are plenty of freesat boxes, but only one freesat recorder that I can find.

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

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

[Brian JohnParticipant @brianjohn93961]

Old Mart : I pulled the whole unit apart, removing top, front and rear panels. There is no fan. At least, nothing that looks like a standard computer fan. There is a white cylinder inside the DVD player which MIGHT be the fan but that will not help the hard drive as it is too far away.

I did try to remove this cylinder to have a closer look at it but I could not get it out of the DVD player.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

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.

 

[Brian JohnParticipant @brianjohn93961]

It is the HDD which is getting hot ; the case directly under the HDD is the hot part. There is nothing else inside in that area. I am beginning to think that this is normal. I am not sure because I have nothing to compare it with but the unit is now on top of the TV cabinet on two wooden blocks so now there is plenty of ventilation.

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