I assume you tried a different zip code? I tried this when I wasn't getting updates, but first I checked the channel lineup to verifiy it was similar to my local listings. The channel line up is in the back of the TV-listings that come with my weekend news paper. You can edit the channels BTW. I was not having updates, changed the zip code and the updates started working again. A week or two after that I needed to reset for some other reason and put it back to my home zip code and it has been working ever since. I'm not sure if it was reseting that fixed it, or just timing (i.e. they started sending the lineup again).
I tried a different zip code, but I don't think that was it because weeks went by without me changing anything and all of sudden I had 5 days of listings. HOWEVER... after changing the channel numbers, the next day: the screen says "NO DATA" WTF? (But I still had ads of course) Today after not having used the unit for several days, I turn it on and it wants me to pick from 5(!) different channel lineups. I pick the most correct one and once again, most of the channel numbers are incorrectly assigned. I just adjusted them. Me thinks TVG is in some state of flux right now and trying new things. We'll see if it sticks this time.
Yes it does. Panasonic in their infinate wisdom? made a power supply for the DMRE55 which was a reasonable effort--but then they decided to add a hard drive to the unit and call it a DMRE85 without beefing up the current capabilities of the unit --all they did was to thicken up the heatsink on the str chip and hope it would last. It didn`t and I have had many of these units through my workshop with the dreaded u99
I`m pretty shure this is the same--I have just had one arrive with the same old problem and as soon as I`ve taken it apart and looked at it I will let you all know. I have seen u99 on the following models--,55,75,85 and 95, the service manual states that u99 is a failure of one chip to talk to another, in all cases one of the low voltage lines that run between the dvd drive and the digital processing board falls to zero and cuts off communication. The DMRE75 has a nasty power supply unit which is difficult to fault find on and even worse to repair owing to the small size of the components used but such is life
Hi Repairman, Another question. I posted last time in November (http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/54/143317#2709428) about a DMR-E85H that was only showing "Please Wait". I got it going that time, but now it's happened again, and it's been over a week with no success. I have never had a U99 error message; all I get it "Please Wait". Is it possible that this is a power supply problem, too? The "Please Wait" problem always happens after the machine is unplugged (even after powering down with the Power button). It has happened about 3 times in the past 4 months, but now there is no rebooting. Any idea how much it would cost to repair (i.e. time to diagnose, cost of parts). I can't seem to find any technicians who have worked on this model. Thanks for any info. A ray of hope would be great, or just "hey, time to get a new unit" would be okay advice, too (might save me a lot of wasted time).
Sorry for the delay in replying as its been busy at work and I`ve just finished building a P.C. for a friend`s kids and it took a while to transfer their schoolwork over--now to the problem in hand, the cost of repairs to your model would be approx £90 all in. You certainly have a power supply fault as I1ve just completed a DMRE 95 with exactly the same trouble--You may have trouble finding someone to fix it as it`s quite a specialist job and the spares are not redily available--send me your e-mail address and your county and I may be able to find you a dealer who can fix it.
Just to update you on your DMRE95Hs--it shares the same power supply as th DMRE55 and 85 models and the same problems occur. I`ve just fixed a 95 and used the kit of parts I put together for the `55 and `85 models and effected a complete cure
I haven't written anything on here in awhile (but keep up with the goings on as a lurker) since I kept getting the dreaded U99's and loss of the TV guide. Since that time, mostly everything has been fine. I get all the channels (although it doesn't recognize all of the channels in my cable system so I can't use the TV guide for everything) Recently, on two separate occasions we were watching a DVD late at night and I forgot to remove it from the player before shutting it off. Sure enough, the next day when I turned it on and went into the TV guide screen I couldn't access the "sort" key or the channel up screen or even take the disk out of the player. Instead I had to unplug and replug. When it started up again after the "Please wait" screen everything was fine. I still had the channels, could move to other screens in the TV menu and even could remove the disk. I guess I wanted to just remind people, if you're having problems don't forget to take the disk out of the player before shutting it off.
I discovered this thread 2 years ago,lurking for other answers,and feeling exempt from the u99 error, as I had a new dmre-85h.But NOW I finally got it.U99 during divide operation-freeze. Now my unit won't get past >>self check>>/u99. I tried all mentioned button presses. Panny tech. says, "service unit/all data lost". Q: Is there any hope of getting my Hd data back? I know that once they have it, =no hope. I still believe the Hd is ok, but "communication error" as they put it, is outside of the Hd. -If so,can I mount this drive on a Pc? -This thread appears to have had legs for over 2 years. And they still have no solution. It seems that these machines (which I love) are inevitably doomed with this curse. Thanks in advance
The TVGuide OS on my unit stopped working last week and hasn't fixed itself. I am going back to manual timer recordings now. I am also pretty close to trashing this box and going HD-DVR from my local provider. Stupid thing only work half the time, but that 500 dollar price tag is a hard thing to take a bath on...
I just thought you all should know that late last week I lost all my TVGos listings and it was that way through the weekend. Suddenly last night two days worth showed up and it was all still there this morning. I am hoping it was just a little TV Guide glitch. (knock on wood)
Any time TVGO stops showing up, try a power off and unplug. That's always worked here. Others have reported sucess trying a different ZIP code; a good one to use is the ZIP for you local PBS station. Cal
UUNOWHOO, Have you tried the firmware update,... from what I seen, the only time you get a U99 during a divide is with old firmware(Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure). The other suggestion, .... and this is for anyone wanting to send there E85 in for service, ask the service guys if they absolutely need you drive in the machine for service, personally I'd send it to the without the drive in there, then re-install the drive once it comes back. they should have spares around that they can use for testing and repair!! once it gets home, re-install the origional drive, if the drives good, no lost data, if the drives bad, they sounld be able to tell you the drive they put in worked just fine, then ask them to leave it in there, ... problem solved (Except for the lost data)
I thought I remembered reading somewhere if you remove the HD and reinstall, the system auto formats it, thus, lost data. Robert
I was at Wal-Mart tonight and there were two HDD/DVD Recorder units. The better of the two was a Phillips model w/ 160GB HD. Price was $299. Did a quick search on Wal-Mart website and found three: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=554392 Robert
I have also lost at least some of the TVGuide listings as of a week ago, implying that we're likely dealing with a problem from the source of the listings rather than the unit itself (as many of us experienced a year or more ago -- thanks to those in this forum who ran it down BTW!). But I suppose the other possibility is an incompatibility with new TVGuide features and we require a firmware upgrade -- but that's a fairly idle speculation. I updated to a new firmware at that time (which was in the midst of the original U99 issues). I wonder if there have been any updated since then. I can't remember the numbers from the old update (was there a "970" involved?).
WOW! People still talking about the Panasonic DMR-E85H! I have had mine for a few years now. Got it as an "open box" return at Circuit City for a little over $300 (I thought it was steep but it was actually over $100 off). I brought it home and almost immediately encountered the U99 error. And a lockup. I _think_ (been a while) I had the funky green tvgos error. I was mad, hadn't had this thing 24 hours. I searched the 'net (was like 2am and CC was closed so I couldn't return it) and found the website that talked about those probs and told us to download the Japanese firmware (umm. For people living in NA, it is ntsc). I did, burned it to cd, stuck it in my Panny, it did its thing... No problems since except a while back tvgos lost its data and I had to re-edit a lot of my channels. Kind of a RPitA, you can page up/down in the guide of course with the channel buttons but you can't "drag" a channel while doing, ya' have to move one line at a time. Oh well, one problem in 3(?) years of HEAVY use - recording tv shows, editing out commercials, splitting shows when I got lazy and just did a quick set record for 3 one hour shows (hit record button until it says 3 hours), burning countless dvd-r, a few dvd-r to hard drive dubs of movies other people recorded - then took commercials out and re-burned to a different dvd-r. I have seen cheaper dvd/hard-drive recorders since but I've not felt like I got ripped off. I was advised to turn off vbr and a couple other settings and the picture looks great to me (depending on source material, of course). I have heard that if the ps ever goes flaky it will show u99. Have heard the same thing about if the mainboard goes flaky. Have heard if you get a u99 you need to send it in to Panny. So I wonder if everyone that has (ever) seen a u99 bothered to upgrade to the Japanese firmware? Doesn't affect menu language, btw - just the "operation" afaict. I _think_ it ended up making the thing "region-free" as well but that wasn't my purpose in upgrading. Unit still seems as quick to respond as it ever did. Hasn't slowed down. Switched to digital cable a while back, lost tvgos. PitA. Thought about rigging an a/b cable switch to bypass the "box" at night. Finally managed to find the code that allowed the Panny to control the cable box through the ir blaster. Realized the guide was there, it just had to be able to change the channel. Hmm. Had a few "reboots" from disc burning errors with crappy media (memorex, sony, maxell, "circuit city house brand" ("nextech" & "esa", may not be their brand but junk you only find at CC), & I think TDK). Then I learned about Verbatim & Tayo Yuden. No more problems (ever) on this Panny - or any other burner for that matter. TY impossible to find locally, have been using Verbatim for the last year or so, only about 275 discs so far but all good burns on the Panny set-top recorder & on my pc. If I need to divide a title and then edit out commercials I always divide it first. May be why I have had no problems, I've read somewhere that some people did extensive editing (cuts) & divided and re-edited and had problems. Dunno. I expect to go to satellite late this spring & I suppose I will lose tvgos. Hmm. I guess that will take some getting used to although there are a couple of channels that have never been in my guide & I've always had to do manual timers b/c I was too lazy to look up the vcr+ codes. Besides setting manual timers on this recorder is just about as easy as breathing - iow, you don't have to think to do it. I suppose the main reason I will miss tvgos when I lose it is that I find it convenient to search for a show by name in tvgos, hit the button to record it, hit the button again to tell it to record the show "regularly." I can manually setup a timer to record regularly but then it wouldn't automatically skip recording if the show is not on for some reason one night but keep recording the series in general. That's handy to a (somewhat) lazy person. Hmm. Bitches? Well, the dvd menus aren't nearly as pretty as some of the (motion) backgrounds you can rig up on a computer. Can't add music to 'em either. I can't remember if I've ever tried playing mp3/wma discs on it so I can't comment on whether it handles vbr or not... Everything else in the house handles them. There's not much I can do without the remote so I worry sometimes that I will lose it or it will just wear out. When I get my satellite receiver & my "dish farm" put together I will probably buy a good learning/programmable remote. Hmm. I am currently recording two "related" movies to dvd that I snagged off of HBO-on-Demand(?) a while back. In LP mode they missed fitting on a dvd-r by like 80meg... So I am of course forced to use FR recording mode b/c I didn't want to edit out the credits... I count this as a bitch b/c of course the Panny doesn't use the entire disc. Only 90-some-odd percent of it. Dunno why, I have read it is just how it is. Can always tell by looking at the disc, there is enough non-recorded space to actually see (iow, it's not just a couple of megs). I read when I bought the thing that another brand (Pioneer? Sony?) recorded 100% of the disc but all the reviews I read at the time said that the quality of the recordings were best on the Panny against all other recorders then available regardles of touted hardware specs. So I'm pretty happy. Other gripes? Hmm. Uhh. Err... Have heard some people bellyache b/c the remote doesn't have an eject button. Hey, WTF? What, exactly, is the point of having an eject button on the REMOTE? If it had one would it open the door, fling the disc out (& into its case) and suck in the next disc, or would I still have to get my lazy *ss up and walk over to the recorder? 'Cause I'm thinking that if I've got to go over to it anyway I might as well hit the eject button on the recorder anyway... If for no other reason than the fact that it would look pretty stupid to open it over HERE & then walk over THERE... Or the fact that there are a couple of cats running around the house who don't seem lazy at all when things sort of move around over their heads; or the fact that one of them is long-haired and I don't want the fan in the Panny sucking any stray cat hair onto the lens; also the fact that I and others here smoke a lot and I can't see the point of having that cd-door open longer than it takes to actually insert/remove a disc. Hmm. So no other gripes after all I guess. Now that I have a wireless Logitech keyboard it would be nice to be able to plug it in and do title naming & stuff but that's not something that was available on any of 'em when it was new. BTW, people hearing drive activity at night when it is off, I'm told the drive defrags itself during periods of inactivity. Must be true, have never reformatted mine, always has at least 50-odd titles on it in various states of editing, waiting to be edited, waiting on more episodes or like content to be burned with... Never any trouble with "tangled data"... Just wanted to post someone's POSITIVE experiences. Don't know how Panasonic's customer service is 'cause I've never needed to find out. Later....
