Sudden total loss of all channels on Beyonwiz T4

[AndrewSmith]

Hi everyone,

I've previously had issues with an occasional channel dropping off availability in the T4 unit, requiring a reboot to have it come back. The unit has been humming along beautifully and rock solid for what could easily be a couple of years now. No complaints and it just works.

In the last couple of weeks I've had a channel dropout a couple of times but it was easily dealt with. Then a couple of days ago it got taken to a whole news level. Even upon reboot, zero channels available on the T4. In its place is either the Beyonwiz splash screen from bootup or a black screen (from the end of playing back a file (if memory serves me correctly).

I can plug the same antenna cable into the TV instead of the T4 and the digital television reception is perfect with all channels available etc. There is no signal strength metering available but you get the idea.

I thought there might possibly be a random glitch in the T4 software and that a firmware "upgrade" reinstall might fix it. No change at all.

I've tried disabling tuner A in the setup to force things to go to tuner B in case there was an issue with 'A', but it has made no difference. (Tuner A has since been re-enabled.)

Gully, I've tried connecting the cable directly to the 4th tuner and when rebooting it go as far as displaying "no" on the OLED screen on the T4 box. I took that as being a bad thing.

Also, since this has been happening I've been getting the following type of error messages from IceTV.

Dear Andrew,

IceTV has received a notification from your video recorder that it was unable to schedule one of your shows due to an error. A link to your My Week page and the details of the error are provided below for your convenience.

Regards,

The IceTV team.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Manage this recording Show Name: 7.30
Channel: ABC HD
Time: 2019-Oct-03 19:30:00
Duration: 30
Device Label: Beyonwiz T4
Device Type: Beyonwiz T4
Message from recorder: Timer conflict: 'National Nine News', '10 News First', 'Seven News', 'ABC News'
Last Updated: 2019-09-27 19:42:46

It seems like the T4 might be effectively telling IceTV "I've got no channels to allocate to this recording."

I've got no idea what is happening and would be most grateful for your feedback.

Andrew

[prl]

Message from recorder: Timer conflict: 'National Nine News', '10 News First', 'Seven News', 'ABC News'
Last Updated: 2019-09-27 19:42:46

It seems like the T4 might be effectively telling IceTV "I've got no channels to allocate to this recording."

More precisely, it means "there are fewer than 4 tuners available, and 4 tuners are needed to make all those recordings".

The underlying limitation is that to record from a channel (digital service carrying a program stream) being broadcast at a particular frequency a tuner needs to be allocated to that frequency (and the tuner can be shared with recordings of other channels at that frequency). In Australian digital FTA broadcasting, each broadcaster has their own frequency in a broadcast area, so for "frequency" you can read "broadcaster" in Australian TV. The recordings come from 4 broadcasters, so 4 tuners are needed to be allocated.

Do all (or any) tuners appear in MENU>Information>Devices?

You may need to reboot (or at least restart the GUI) for a change in a tuner's enabled state to have any effect.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Do all (or any) tuners appear in MENU>Information>Devices?

Yeah, it looks like it's dropped some tuners doesn't it. The IceTV conflict notification is for the '7.30' program on the ABC, but the conflicting timers on other networks are for much earlier programs.
Tuner power regulator(s)?

Andrew:
Turn off the power to the T4 at the wall.
Wait 30 mins, then take off the cover and have a gander at the regulators.
Any brown/black ooze, see prl's mess here & the link to mine in the same post.

[AndrewSmith]

(sorry for delay in getting back to you)

Excellent news. I have two tuners -- A and B -- available per the photo of what displayed on the screen.

T2 with two tuners v2.jpg (75.88 KiB) Viewed 1505 times

Tuner info from problem T4 unit.

Will shut down the unit and look for bad/naughty caps.

Andrew

[Paul_oz53]

Hi Andrew,

Just to be clear, it is not capacitors that are the culprit here. Rather, it is one or more failed voltage regulators under the heatsinks on the LHS of the case. By all means check those too but the actual problem is almost certainly the regulators.

Some models also suffer from a failure of the heatsink compound, resulting in the mess prl shows in his post as quoted by Grumpy
_Geoff. If you see that mess, repair is an urgent task, before the copper tracks on the mainboard are damaged beyond repair.

[AndrewSmith]

I've blown away a polite layer of dust and have taken these pics of the first of the two heat sinks.

Andrew

[AndrewSmith]

After looking at one of the photos of heat sink #1, I have taken another one and may have spotted something here.

Andrew

[AndrewSmith]

Here are my photos of heat sink #2.

Andrew

[AndrewSmith]

Oh, and I've just discovered that I need to manually select to receive notifications on a discussion. Thought it was automatic for ones you start. I should be more responsive now.

Thanks again for all your help.

Andrew

[MrQuade]

Oh, and I've just discovered that I need to manually select to receive notifications on a discussion. Thought it was automatic for ones you start. I should be more responsive now.

You can change the default behaviour from the user control panel. You can set it to notify you of any reply to a thread you have posted in.

That heat sink 1 is looking pretty crusty too.

[prl]

Yep, that T4 looks in need of urgent treatment. This issue (the board being attacked by breakdown products from the heatsink cement) can cause a variety of problems. It rendered my T4 unbootable.

But Warkus fixed it up better than new

[AndrewSmith]

That'll be a job for Warkus the living legend.

Andrew

[AndrewSmith]

Well, the unit has been to Warkus and he rated the damage, on a "shot to pieces" scale of 1 to 10, as a 25. There were a few layers of PCB track that had been eaten through and the damage was already done whilst the unit was still working correctly.

Given that there are issues with cheaper electronic components that don't behave properly when it comes to longevity, I'm thinking that it would be a good standard operating procedure to have Warkus change things over whilst the machine is new and before any damage can happen. It's gotta be well worth the investment.

Andrew