Virgin Media V+ box not holding power

[winston1]

Is it THEIR equipment?

Sky's isn't.

YES. And so is sky's if it's sky Q.

 

[EFLImpudence]

Ok. Mine isn't. Haven't got Q.

 

[Iggifer]

More importantly, are they gonna care? Not like it's their newest model, it's certainly lost any value to VM

 

[chivers67]

Virgin offer free service call outs for all services

As opposed to Sky charging don't they?

 

[chivers67]

Could just be the contacts on the rear switch or the switch itself. Is it a Samsung or another make?

It's a Samsung.
With two main boards inside, I'm wondering whether what looks like the Power Board could be sourced from elsewhere and swapped into my unit.

Maybe, there's no real harm in trying as long as you can put it back together without it looking like you've tampered with it.

 

[Steve]

All virgin media equipment - v+, tivo, routers, all belongs to them. Never does ownership transfer to the subscriber. For this reason you shouldn't tamper with it, as it isnt yours and they will come and fix / replace it FOC. The kit is therefore very good quality commercial grade (cisco i think) and rarely goes wrong.

This differs from Sky where all the equipment belongs to the subscriber (regardless how it was acquired), and as such they make a fortune selling you extended warranties. Also, because the stuff has to be paid for by the subscriber or the subscription, the kit is built down to a price so it pretty poor quality.

 

[JamieH]

May be worth asking the mods to transfer this to the AV forum. They may have more in depth knowledge about this over there.

It's over there on the AV forum but so far the only reply has been "Just get VM out"

then why the hell dont you? So what if you loose your recordings? What if the hard drive failed? You should have backed them up if tyey were so important. Have you tried pulling the hard drive and connecting it to a pc? I strongly suspect the recordings are in mpeg format, though may be encoded - you could try putting them back onto the hdd in the new box? I also strongly suspect that opening or altering vm's kit is forbidden in their ts and cs.

If you'd read the opening post you'd have seen the answer to your opening question.
What are "loose" recordings?
That's an IF. The fact is it hasn't failed.
Obviously.
Yes.
No. they're not.
What new box?

 

[JamieH]

Virgin are unlikely to do anything other than swap the box for a new one.

Why would they bother employing trained menders?

If they take away the box, you will never again see what was on it.

If it has a hard drive inside, that's they thing you want to get your hands on. If you can't copy it yourself (it may have standard connectors) consider taking it to a local PC mender and asking them to copy it to a new drive; or even onto DVDs (which is worth doing with your treasured photos and recordings) or a memory stick

You're spot on, John.
VM's quick fix is to apply a direct box swap instead of fixing the fault.
I've got the HD out but the drive is formatted to a system foreign to Windows.
Your PC mender suggestion is an excellent one - thanks.

 

[JamieH]

I suspect the VM hard drive is a) in a proprietary format b) the recordings will be encoded and potentially c) encoded to the specific motherboard of the recorder, so may not be as simple as just sticking the hard drive in another device.

Worth a try if you can locate one cheap enough (eBay?)

That does now appear to be the case.
There's a link between the motherboard and the VM card, I think.

 

[Steve]

I've got the HD out but the drive is formatted to a system foreign to Windows.
Your PC mender suggestion is an excellent one - thanks.

Will a PC mender be willing to deal with

1. A device not recognised by an IBM compatible machine?
2. A device not belonging to you?

If you value TV so much invest in an on demand service such as netflix or amazon. You already (presumably) have superfast broadband to support it.