Any opinions on the Sharp DV-HR300?

Hi Ax
You certainly have problems. Firstly reading your initial post it's a pity you didn't return it to the store after the first problems occurred.I am a bit confused in that the store supplied it with movies already recorded on to the Hard Drive. Most unusual!
It seems that your Sharp will record to the HDD from TV but that it will not record from HDD to DVD-R or DVD-RW. ( I did wonder if you had been trying DVD+ media ).
Does it playback pre-recorded dvd movies? If that's OK then I think you have no alternative but to consult your Sharp dealer. As you have read through the forum you'll have seen yours appears to be a unique problem. Maybe another member can come up with a solution. Sadly I can't. Best of luck, Silver64

 

Hi Ax,

Just like Silver64 said, are you using DVD-RW or DVD+RW ?
Also make sure that your DVD-RW is 1x or 2x. The Sharp won't accept DVD-RW with higher speed.
But I guess that your drive may be dead because it won't accept DVD-R either.

If you can't have it repaired then maybe you can repair it yourself because I suspect that the DVD drive in the Sharp is just a conventional DVD drive that you find in laptops.

 

Thanks so much for replying. In answer, no, I haven't tried using any plus disks at all, but I have a lot of minus ones around my office. The ones I tried at first were probably no good because they were 1-8x speed. The manual says this is no good. Also they didn't have any CPRM icons. The ones I've been trying to use do say they are CPRM 1-2x speed, DVD-RW and I tried DVD-R's. The version is right. I'm using exactly the TDK disks that are recommended by the US site. I feel like I'm missing something important though. The Japanese site doesn't recommend any specific disks. As I said, everything works except for recording to DVD's. It still spits them out saying the disk isn't the right kind (loosely translated). Any suggestions, I'd be happy! If not, I'll wait a bit and maybe send it back to the shop later, or get a new one if I can scrape up a bit more cash. It's not compatible with my satellite dish tuner anyway. Thanks for the replies!

 

Hi Ax_ I am in Australia with a 300X. I tried several brands and speeds of -RW and found the only ones to works were Sony DVD-RW 1x-2x
I have redorded to these disc in both VR and Video mode. On the pack it states that these discs are DVD-RW ver. 1.1/2X-SPEED DVD-RW Revision 1.0. Also the pack refers to a web site http://www/dvdhs.com. Hope this helps.

 

Hello,

I promised you to inform about the answer from sharp. They said my player is out of order and that i should bring them back.
I'm sur it's not the case so I will format them after reading one or two video store on it.

No luck

 

I talked to Sharp today. I bought a new TV and the TV codes aren't in the manual. Rather than find the codes on the net, I thought I'd give them a call. They were very helpful and offered to send me a firmware upgrade CD for free! They said it would take about a week for me to get it. Knowing Japanese service, it probably will take 2 or 3 days. Surprise surprise! If I can, maybe I'll try to zip the firmware and post it. Anybody need it?

 

I'd be interested in that upgrade.

Hi everybody I'm new here. I just brought a sharp recorder 4 weeks ago. Very happy with it so Far.

 

OK Aarvark,
It came this weekend. I ran it though and it seemed to do something. Not sure what all it fixed though. Got it zipped and uploaded. You can download it at http://icp.is.env.kitakyu-u.ac.jp/~sorensen/web/other/DRIVE.zip . I'll leave it up for a while, but not forever. If someone wants to host it on their server, go ahead and upload it and give us a link. I need to clean out my server!
Again, for the record, this update is for a DV-HR350 unit. Not an S, U, or any other unit. My unit's model is Japanese, so I wouldn't recommend it for any other kind. Use at your own risk! The instructions say to turn on your unit, open the disk drive, slide the disk in and close it. The update will be actually start after the disk has finished loading. You will have to wait a bit for this to happen. (I waited about 3 or 4 minutes) It is supposed to say "300" on your panel during the update. When all is finished the disk should spit itself out. It should then say "307". After you take the disk out of the tray, hit the power button on the unit to turn it off, then back on (reboot it). That should do it. If there is an error, it should say "00020E". In that case there was a reading error. Hit the power button (on the unit) and start over.
Hope this helps somebody!

 

By the way, now I can record a few DVD-R's. Which ones will stay in the drive and which ones won't seem to be random. Haven't found any DVD-RW's that like my drive yet. Haven't found any Sony DVD-RW's at my local store that fill the spec's listed, but then again, one Mitsubishi DVD-R didn't fit the specs and it seems to work. Go figure!

 

Hey thanx man

I'll try this out tonight

 

I cant seem to get the link to function ( http://thor.prohosting.com/e5e/Sharp_DV-HR350.exe ). Is it possible for anyone to send me the file? or another link? I would greatly appreciate it. I really need a multiregion hack for dv-hr300.. Any suggestions? by the way; my e-mail is robert_buch@c2i.net

Thanks

 

Australian (esp Melbourne) readers - check your Aldi catalogue. This week (23 March 06) they offer 160G HDD recorders with DVD burners with all the bells and whistles, including SD/CF etc card ports for $400.

Mightily tempted!

nylon.net

 

I still can't get the darn thing to record. Now it will accept my DVD's, but when I try to initialize it always fails. If I don't initialize and just try to dub or record anyway it works for about 20 or 30 seconds, then fails. I think it is only taking that long to fill the buffer. It gives me an error message that says it was unable to write the information to the DVD. I think the writer head is busted or something. As suggested, I'm thinking of trying to install a new drive myself. It'd be a lot cheaper than buying a new unit and it's something I've never tried before. It was suggested that the drive is probably an ordinary laptop drive. I went to a computer parts shop today and looked. They had a lot of different drives, but the open button is located in the wrong place. On my unit the open button is just to the right of the bay door. Also I didn't see any drives as slim as I think I'll need. Any suggestions? Any advice?

 

Hi Ax

the software you recieved is the same version as on the german
website , http://www.sharp.de
drive version 1.45.
People should be carefull when loading it inside their machine, i don't know your region code and there may be some region protection inside the drive firmware.
For you , i fear your drive is just defective
You may try to clean the lens, but for that you must be very handy
You have to take the complete drive appart.
And the drive inside the sharp is not a common pc or laptop drive.

for all the people with a european "s" model and timer problems , hangup's etc. , update the firmware to version 0123 and the drive to version 1.45 found on the german website.
And don't forget to press "9" in the service menu after updating.
After this you will have a perfect machine
(but never able to use -RW with a version higher then 1.1 1 or 2 speed
or +R(W) )

 

Thanx for the advice. By the way, my region number is 2.

 

I just bought DV-HR300 from Singapore. Now I have a problem playing DVD's. I have managed to play some discs and I have tried to find a pattern why certain discs can be played and certain not but I haven't find any (it's not because of PAL/NTSC or region code).

I think that the drive can't read discs properly. It takes few minutes trying to read and then an error appears 'Non-standard disc. Please remove it'. During that reading process the drive speed fluctuates (you can hear it) like with computer CD/DVD-drives when the disc unreadable. I read that some of you have had the same error -but with recording. In this case drive can't even play discs.

What could cause the problem like this? I already tried new firmware for the drive (1.45) but it didn't help. I also installed multi-region patch but it didn't help. If the problem is with region-code shouldn't the error message be different?

Any help is highly appreciated

 

Bye bye folks.

It was nice fighting in your side trying to make this evil piece of equipment work properly. Mine finally broke down two months ago, fortunately just a few months before Pixmania's two years guarantee expired. I sent it for repairs and called back six weeks later since their site seemed to be stalled on "your machine is under repairs". They quickly answered that they would check the state of repairs. Two days later they announced that the Sharp was dead and that I had six months to spend a 70% refund on any of their products. I bought the LG 160Go RH7800. So much more user friendly! The sad thing is that I lost some 60 hours of recordings that were on the Sharp HDD and I am stuck with some 30 DVDs the Sharp did not burn properly to be read on other recorders.

 

Will someone PLEASE put us out of our misery and post the multi-region patch for the DV-HR300 or 350? No hack is available anywhere at present.

If you don't want to upload it, you could email it to me at skippy06 at tpg dot com dot au

 

Goodison, sounds like you may have optic head error. I have some other DVD player that said disc error and they all need optic replacement. Anyway where did you get the driver firmware? Is that the one from Japan or Germany? Does that mean it will work with DV-HR300 bought in Singapore? I have other weird problems that I will share in the next reply

 

OK, here is my rant. I bought this recorder just over a year ago in Singapore. It works OK albeit very slow and I am quite sattisfied with it because it is one of the cheapest around (S$699 at that time).
About 3-4 months ago something strange happened. My recorder can't be switched off. Whenever I use it (play HD, DVD, or record HD) then it will go to continuous on-off cycle, and the only way to stop this is to push the reset button or plug off the machine for few minutes. I can still record, play DVD, burn DVD, no problem.
About 20 seconds after I turn it off (put on standby) using power button, the TIMER led will start blinking and turn on the machine by itself even though there is nothing on the timer program. Then few seconds after this the machine will turn itself off for no apparent reason. Then the cycle will continue until I push RESET or plug off.
Anyone has seen this behaviour? I am quite sure it looks like something wrong with the tuner/timer function and could be fixed by firmware upgrade. I also just found out about service centre email contact for Singapore (it's not in their web site) and they asked me to wait while they discuss it with the engineer/factory. I will report an update about this problem in the future. If I don't hear from them in a week I might just install the firmware&drive upgrade from German site anyway to see if it fix this problem.