Recorder Woes


Our Digital Video Recorder (DVR) died over the weekend. Penny was watching it and it went blank – became completely unresponsive with the message “PLEASE WAIT” on its LCD Display. So we waited. When it didn’t change the message for a few hours I figured it was time to start disconnecting things and then power up after a rest and see if it would reboot. I know - you are thinking about the how to occupy a moron joke where you hand someone a note with “please see other side” written on both sides. Penny and I are a little sharper than that – we only waited a few hours when the DVR told us to please wait.


The operator’s manual said that that message appears when the unit starts up and is not a malfunction. So there was hope initially that the problem might clear. I called Panasonic and they said that the unit might have been damaged by a power spike and is hung up trying to reboot. In other words it is broken. Repair costs start at a minimum of $100 with $30 shipping. It was time to start thinking replacement. I called a local repair shop. They charge $30 to make an estimate and oh, by the way, they can’t look at it for 6 to 8 weeks or more (depending on how much warranty work they get).


The real shock came when we looked for a comparable unit. The market is in DVR limbo. We liked our unit because it had free TV Guide (no TiVo subscription.) and could dub from the hard drive to a DVD. There are not many units out there to do that. TiVo and cable providers are dominating the market. There is a market for what we want but it is a seller’s market.


We scoured the Internet and every unit we found that did what we wanted was either out of stock or not available (or too costly).


After many dead ends we finally found a refurbished Samsung unit that had all the features we wanted, was cheap enough and was in stock. So we ordered one.


In the mean time we fall back on our trusty decade-plus old VCRs to record shows we want.

Last time things broke on me it came in 3’s. I hope this is not a new beginning.