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Any opinions on the Sharp DV-HR300?
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ti1075
Newbie
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26. September 2005 @ 01:09 |
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I've bought a 350 two weeks ago. I'm realy pleased with it as it is a major step up to my vcr. I started reading this tread and it's realy helpfull for a newby like me. Thanks to everyone who posted the info and tip's.
The second day I tried burning a DVD from a recording I made on the HD. No probs there. Yesterday I tried dubbing onto a brand new Verbatim DVD-RW. I first got the message that it was an unusable media and my Sharp opened the tray, so I tried formatting the DVD-RW on my PC. The message then said it could not play back the disk so I initiated the disk in video mode (I want the disk to play on a stand alone) My unit started initiating but with about 4 block left on the progress bar it stopped. I waited for half an hour and unplugged the machine because it didn't react to anything anymore. After a couple of minutes I restarted my Sharp and re-tried to initiate. Now the progress bar frose with one block left. I went to bed leaving the machine running because I didn't want to be inpatient but this morning there was still one block left on the progress bar so I unplugged, took a shower and plugged it in again and came to work. The Verbatim is a 4X. I'm using Verbatim-R's for years on my PC now and I have never encountered problems with them. The only coaster's I had where my own stupid mistakes. That's why I went for the Verbatim RW's.
Did anyone encounter the same problem? Is there something I'm doing wrong here or is this a media problem (4-speed or brand)? If so can you share some tips on buying DVD-RW's.
Tony_1075.
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Silver64
Member
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1. October 2005 @ 03:40 |
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Hi Tony ( ti1075) If you look back many months ago in this Forum you will see that the Sharp 300/350 doesn't seem to like 4x DVD-RW's and certainly I would'nt spend money on expensive RW's like Verbatim for the Sharp. R U in the UK? If so you can find lots of cheap but good brands ( 2x) on http://blankdiscshop.co.uk that work fine on this great little recorder.
Hi again to Manny and old fiends on the Sharp 300 forum. Have been away again on my travels and have missed the recent posts. Good to see the Sharp brotherhood is fit and well Cheers
Silver
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ti1075
Newbie
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2. October 2005 @ 23:01 |
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Thanks Silver,
by now I had dug in and read the entire tread. I've bought Fiji 2X and these are working fine.
I've found that if I use the timer recording there is no way I can dub in high speed. This seems a bit weird. I use this machine to tape night showings of Baseball games and want to save some on DVD-RW for later viewing. Now I have to use the normal dubbing which takes me somewhere between 2 and 3 1/2 hours. From what I read the dubbing flag is set to false when timer recording and there is no way to put it back to true. Who at Sharp had the bright idea to make the software behave like that? I mean, they should now that this machine is most likely use as a VCR and people make timer recording on that and then they don't allow you to high speed! A pity since that is the feature I was looking forward in using.
Tony
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mannycam
Member
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3. October 2005 @ 04:19 |
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HI SILVER! Ole buddy! Hope you're doing well my friend. It's been a while. One gets busy in life's daily chores. Still keeping the shiney side down though:) Nice to hear from you again. Yeah this thing about writing speeds will become more and more revelant in the years to come I'm afraid. Hopefully they will still produce the slower speeds.
cheers, Manny
MannyCAM
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talulah
Newbie
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5. October 2005 @ 02:37 |
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On the subject of faster DVDs, I was lucky (???) in that my '300H broke and by the time they realised they couldn't fix it, it had been discontinued in the UK. They shipped me a '400H instead which supports up to 48x discs, although I guess only CDs can go that fast at the moment. I'm not sure what the fastest DVD it can support is, but it writes to my 8x discs no problem at all.
To conclude, it is possible that a DVD drive exchange may be a potential upgrade path for '300 users, although whether Sharp will offer it seems highly unlikely to me.
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mannycam
Member
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5. October 2005 @ 06:08 |
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talulah Youre right....very unlikely..
Sharp will move foward and so will the technology. I know that this lil gem will need to be replaced with an upgraded version someday soon, but hey it will still serve as a DV recorder for tv programs.
cheers, Manny
MannyCAM
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Dillenger
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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5. October 2005 @ 12:54 |
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Hi talulah
Your making a very common error with disk speed , the drive does not support 48x speed disks but can copy at 48 times the video speed.
If , for example, you can put one hour of video on a dvd with a normal compression. If you compress, lower the quality, 8 times more on your HD you can copy 8 hours of video in 1 hour at normal DVDrecorder speed or 16 hours of video at double DVDrecorder speed.
So in that case you can copy at 16x
With a 3x speed DVD recorder and a compression of 16 times you can copy at 48x speed
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. October 2005 @ 12:55
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talulah
Newbie
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10. October 2005 @ 03:44 |
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Dillenger, that's a good point, but the menu system in the '400H when you dub asks you whether you want to use 48x (but admits there may be some problems) 12x, or rate conversion (1x) after you have selected the compression ratio. The '300H doesn't ask that because it can't support the faster discs. My 8x disks work fine in the '400H, but I used 2x when I had the '300H.
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daleroux
Newbie
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12. October 2005 @ 11:38 |
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Hi Dillenger,
I've seen you know many thing about this recorder. I just have one very comon question : i try to find an update for my 400f unit, mainly for clock/timer correction. Is there any sw available on the net (I have seen an update for S version, may not be suitable...).
Thanks in advance.
Dal
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Erikk
Junior Member
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13. October 2005 @ 01:22 |
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The newer DV-HR400 does also have the timer/clock bug ??? This is indecrible if they haven't fixed it since the 300 models !
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talulah
Newbie
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13. October 2005 @ 03:35 |
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Erikk, I'm not sure whether the '400 has the timer bug - I don't use the timer since I've got Sky+, but if you *really* want to know I can test it and tell you.
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Dillenger
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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14. October 2005 @ 13:22 |
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Hi daleroux
As far as i know there is no timer bug on the 400 , there is an update for the S version but that does only correct some language errors.
Most timerproblems are made by the user himself , incorrect use of pdc/vps and forgetting that takes time for the recorder to start up.
But the 400 is not sold in my region so i don't really know much about it.
For the people who still don't know about the -RW support of the 300/350.
It does only support 1 and 2 speed DVD-RW and those disk must have version number 1.1 , higer speed DVD-RW's does not have version number 1.1
But it does support DVD-R with a higer speed (4x, 8x) but it will use them at 2x speed maximum.
There will alway's be brands of DVD disks that are not compatible,
same as on your PC, but most brands are fully compatible
--
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DirkBe
Newbie
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16. October 2005 @ 09:23 |
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Two questions to this community:
Can I remotely control the 350 for recording from a settop box or a DVB-T receiver, and if so, how can this be done? There was an article in July stating that this is possible but I could not set it up.
I have burned my first DVD-R and DVD-RW (VR) and used "fit to DVD" mode. Unfortunately, neither of them could be played in any of my three other DVD player. What do I have to consider to have "compatible" DVDs ?
Thanks for any help.
Dirk
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daleroux
Newbie
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17. October 2005 @ 10:25 |
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Hi Dillenger
You are perfetly right, my recorder is a 300f... The question remains however, can do an update by myself (as for S version).
Thanks to all.
Dal.
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Silver64
Member
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17. October 2005 @ 11:46 |
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DirkBe
Maybe it's a stupid question, but did you make sure you "finalized" the DVD-R /DVD-RW discs before you tried them in your other three DVD players? Un- finalized discs recorded on the Sharp will play back on the Sharp but won't be playable on other DVD players until they are finalized.
Cheers Silver
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mannycam
Member
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17. October 2005 @ 18:01 |
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Hi Silver ole buddy nice to hear from you. Hope everything is well.
In regards to the "No playback on the other 3 machines" I too was going to ask the member about finalizing..Since the unfinalized disc will playback on the Sharp it sometimes fools the user in removing it without finalizing. An easy mistake to make. Other than that I haven't heard of any discs burned with the Sharp not playing in another machine..except of course for the extremely cheap brands which I myself came across when wanting to put one in my young niece's room.
As fars as the method of burning, that should not have any bearing on its playback in other machines.
In any case hope you figure it out. cheers,
Manny
MannyCAM
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andypanny
Newbie
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4. November 2005 @ 01:50 |
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hi everyone
I have a problem with my HR300H.
Sometimes when I set the timer then put the unit into standby the timer turns off. This is a problem when I set more than one prog to record. On occasions it will only record some of the prog before turning the timer off.
I think this was touched on briefly in an earlier post. Wondered if more people had experienced this problem and maybe overcome it.
Thanks
Andy
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Erikk
Junior Member
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4. November 2005 @ 03:19 |
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Hi Andypanny,
The problem you are mentionning looks very similar to the timer bug I had before a firmware upgrade, although I had the HR300F version.
Very often some of the programs did not record, and after lots of observations and experimenting, I found out that when the Sharp shuts down automatically because it's been idleing for 3 hours, sometimes it turns off the timer also (timer light goes off).
There is an option in the Sharp to specify that you don't want it to turn off automatically. I used that option, but it seems like it applies only when the Sharp is not in timer mode. When in timer mode, it seems like the Sharp will always shutdown after 3 hours of inactivity.
The workaround I was using was to never have 3 hours or more between 2 consecutive programs. So if you have a program that ends 5 hours for example before the next one starts, then just program another dummy program for example in betwen. The idea is to prevent the Sharp from automatically turns off.
I don't have this problem anymore after the shop where I bought the machine upgraded the firmware.
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andypanny
Newbie
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9. November 2005 @ 09:26 |
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Thanks Erikk
tried sharp website (uk)
but we don't appear to have any firmware updates.
Us brits always seem to lose out!!!!
Well I will just have to put up with the niggling problem.
Thanks again.
Andy
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 9. November 2005 @ 09:26
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Erikk
Junior Member
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9. November 2005 @ 09:38 |
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Andypanny,
I'm not surprised they don't put the firmware on their website. On the French site, they don't either and they don't mention it exists either. And their hotline is not aware of it. At that time, I called their repair center in France, and there they told me there exists many firmwares, but that you cannot perform the update yourself, the unit must be sent back to them instead. Well I did not believe them and waited, and one day the shop where I bougt the unit sent me a letter telling me to bring it back and a guy in the shop did the update with a Sharp CD in front of me. And of course it's something you can do yourself.
So maybe you could send them an email or write a letter to them demanding that they send you a CD, insisting they have to.
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Dillenger
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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22. November 2005 @ 10:31 |
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A new firmware version for the 300/350 seems to be available
on the german sharp site. (sharp.de)
It's version 0123
I have no idea what the changes are.
only for the "S" version !!
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D0rian
Newbie
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22. November 2005 @ 23:48 |
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Hi Dillenger,
As far as my limited knowledge of German can tell, the site briefly mentions timer problems:
"Geben Sie Ihr Gerät mit der Angabe auf fehlerhaftes Verhalten bei Timer-Steuerung an Ihren Vertragspartner (Handelshaus, bei dem Sie das Gerät erworben haben) zurück."
So it looks like the new version mainly solves timer-problems. Which ones exactly is not explained...
D0rian
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Dillenger
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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23. November 2005 @ 10:09 |
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I Don't know D0rian
my german is not that bad and it only say's :
"Dieses Update dient der Verbesserung einiger Funktionalitäten"
or ..
"This update will improve some functions"
The tuner software, where also the timer is located, will be updated to version 1.94 (or 2.20, see a previous message on this treath),and that's the same as the old update.
Only the digital part will be updated to version 123, the previous update was version 120.
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stovdal
Newbie
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26. November 2005 @ 11:39 |
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Hi Dillinger,
you are no doubt very knowledgeable about our Sharps. Could you possibly explain the features of the "Direct REC TV" button hidden under the cover of the remote ? According to the User Manual (as I understand it) the activation of this push button wil start recording of the program you're actually watching. My 300S unit does not respond to this button (apart from this I love my Sharp).
Cheers Stovdal
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majorusa
Newbie
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26. November 2005 @ 22:16 |
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Dillenger,
To know how to update the firmware on your sharp please read my post on page 17 I think on this thread. You will find step by step instructions on how to do it. I already updated my Sharp but I cannot see any difference from before.
By the way the Direct rec buton does not function on my Sharp with scart cable plugged in.
Hope that this helps.
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