Should the Dvr be able to record with the tv switched off?

Appleblossom42

I could do this with my old vcr so when I was on holidays I wouldn't need to have the tv on standby wasting electricity for two weeks. If I set a schedule to record on the dvr, turn off the tv but leave it plugged in I've notice after a few minutes the dvr goes into standby, then off and doesn't record. Does the tv have to be left in standby mode? If so this is ridiculous as sky I've been told can still pick up the signal when the tv's turned off completely.

redrob13

This is a problem I had when I switched to the DVR also, after many calls to UPC, multiple visits from technicians and two replacement boxes I finally managed to fix the problem. Whats more the solution was surprisingly simple.

My telly, a Sony as it happens, has two SCART connections and there's nothing remarkable in that. However, one of those connections is labelled "SmartLink", that may be a specific Sony brand name, but other manufacturers would have something similar. Apparently this "SmartLink" enables the potential for some communication between the TV and box. While the UPC box doesn't utilise this, the fact that the box is plugged into the SmartLink SCART while the TV is powered off seemed to cause any recording to fail after a few minutes. Once I switched to the other, non"SmartLink", SCART all was well and I now have trouble free recording.

I don't understand why this is a problem, but switching to the other SCART port on the TV definitely fixed the recording issue for me.

Hope that helps.

Merch

Yes you can, it should come out of standby to record, just set it up to try record something after the lenght of time it takes to go into standby or set up record and put into standby, it should come back, its probably a power saving tool doing that.

Appleblossom42

Redrob, yes my tv is Sony and the vcr set itself up by smartlink. I completely forgot about that. I've switched the scarts so will see what happens, fingers crossed. A great and very helpful reply.

Appleblossom42

Redrob thank you so much, it worked Not in a million years would I have thought of that. You've saved me a lot of bother not to mention a lower lecky bill. Cheers!!

gpjordanf1

redrob13 wrote: »

This is a problem I had when I switched to the DVR also, after many calls to UPC, multiple visits from technicians and two replacement boxes I finally managed to fix the problem. Whats more the solution was surprisingly simple.

My telly, a Sony as it happens, has two SCART connections and there's nothing remarkable in that. However, one of those connections is labelled "SmartLink", that may be a specific Sony brand name, but other manufacturers would have something similar. Apparently this "SmartLink" enables the potential for some communication between the TV and box. While the UPC box doesn't utilise this, the fact that the box is plugged into the SmartLink SCART while the TV is powered off seemed to cause any recording to fail after a few minutes. Once I switched to the other, non"SmartLink", SCART all was well and I now have trouble free recording.

I don't understand why this is a problem, but switching to the other SCART port on the TV definitely fixed the recording issue for me.

Hope that helps.

That is genius!

I also have a Sony TV with the same problem with the DVR!

Brilliant, thanks so much Redrob13

zilog_jones

Watch out regarding using different SCART sockets - with most TVs only the first SCART socket will have RGB video inputs, and the others will be composite and or s-video only (UPC DVR does RGB and composite) so you may see a significant reduction in picture quality.

If the SmartLink socket has the only RGB input, is there some way of disabling SmartLink on the TV?

redrob13

Appleblossom and gpjordan, you're both very welcome, I'm glad it worked out.

Zilog, you're right, in many cases only one of the SCART inputs is RGB, and hence better picture quality. As it turned out, on my telly both SCARTs are RGB, and I'm not aware of there being a way of turning off the SmartLink.