Panasonic E30 problem

[asylum]

Hello everybody. I've been browsing this board for a few weeks now, and have been able to answer most of my questions just by looking around here.

I bought a Panasonic E30 DVD recorder about 3 weeks ago, and everything has been working fine until last night. Using Ritek DVD-R's, I began getting a U11 error message (dirty disc) or a message saying NO RECORD. Then I cannot eject the disc without forcing the unit into Standby mode then pressing the Open button.

I've burned about 25 of these Ritek's without a problem. All from the same block of 50 that I got from shop4tech. I tried 6 of them last night and all had the same problem, then I tried a Verbatim DVD-R and it worked. This morning I tried a Verbatim again, and it didn't work.

I called Panasonic and they said to use Panasonic or TDK media and that should solve the problem. Sounds like a BS excuse to me. Does it make sense that what has been working well for weeks all of a sudden has problems?

Any input or comments would be appreciated.

[jrittenh]

If you have the answer, please pass it on.

Simliar thing happened to me; I bought a spindle of 100 Ritek's from Sima, and the first couple did fine, and then about a dozen were crap and I got constant U11s and blotchy spots on the DVDs where the things didn't take a recording.

I decided to try again after passing up the defective disks, and all was well for about a month. Then, towards the end of the spindle, the disks were all messed up again, and I had to chuck about a dozen.

Not trusting Sima again, I did what my wife advise - go to Media Supply, which had given us good CDs in the past for good prices. The MS prices were $180 for a hundred rather than $140 at Sima. But considering the waste and aggravation, I figured I could trust MS.

Anyway, I had a short stack of Verbatims around for an emergency, and started to try using 'em. My DMR-E30 did exactly the same thing, wouldn't accept them for use, claimed they were already recorded, and locked the disk compartment up. I had to do some fancy stunts to get the machine to cough out the blank DVD.

I tried a remaining Ritek (the MS package hadn't shown) and it behaved the same way. Took the DMR-e30 back to Abt Electronics for repairs(suburban Chicago), bought another one and stuck a ESP on both. By G*d, I'm going to get my money's worth out of these buggers....


I'll report back when they repair or replace the thing. Oh, yeah - it stopped taking in numeric codes from the remote a few days before it crapped out. Total time in use - about a month plus.

[jrittenh]

Correction: The guys who sold me the DVD blanks were RIMA, not Sima.

Abt Electronics called up this morning and said - hey, we got this thing to record and open, what's your problem? Their guess was that something got reset from when the machine was off for so long. (I'd tried having it unplugged overnight, but that didn't fix it for me.)

I then said - well, what about the problems with the machine responding to the remote? Your techs told me to take mine home - still have it in the green security tape they put on it to say 'this is his let him out with it', and you can't test it on that without the remote. Oops, they said.

The tech did say that the machines were so new that all they did was to test it to see if the user was an idiot with it, and any repairs had to be made at the factory. I then offered to come up with the remote ASAP and go through it with them, and he said - well, we'll need that for an exchange, my supervisor will call you on Monday about an exchange. :P :P

This still isn't an answer, but - try disconnecting the durn thing for a couple of days and see what happens.

[asylum]

I am happy to report that now everything works fine. The Ritecs that were intially rejected now play, the Verbatims play, and things are the way they were before the problems.

I don't really know what was wrong, but I have a couple ideas...

I was making DVD-R's of some prerecorded VHS tapes that I wanted to backup, and one of the tapes was Macrovision protected. Possibly that screwed with my E30? I tried making a backup of a Disney VHS this weekend, and just playing the video through the DVD recorder completely disabled the record button! Strange that a VHS tape can send signals to the DVD recorder?!?!

What I think is a more likely reason is condensation on the discs. I am in Northeast USA, and nights are getting cold now, and my machines are in a room that wasn't heated. Room temp got real cool, then warmed up when I entered the room and turned the heat on, creating condensation on the discs. I read about this in the owner's manual, and sounds legitimate.

[jrittenh]

H'm. I could imagine the hot/cold/condensation problems being contributory. I mean, these things can get hot, which is why there's such a big fan on them. But if that's so, these units must be way way touchy about such things.

Still doesn't explain the numerics going out on me or weird stuff like the macrovision stuff for you. The Macrovision thing sounds like there's specific oh-no-you-don't circuitry in the E30 that goes CLUNK when it runs into CGMS/Macrovision input. Look at:

http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=e30%20macrovision&safe=images&ie=ISO-8859-1&lr=&num=100&hl=en

for kicks. Personally, I'd never try to do a dupe of DVDs that way. Do it through a PC DVD burner with De-CSS, and all that, and do the conversion digitally. Lots better than an analog copy in any event.

[thxkid]

WRONG, I have a E20 and my analog Dupes from any DVD I record look better than most DVD rips, specially since I use the FR speed to squeeze every bit out of the disc when I record a 90min. movie, so I am not left with 30minutes. Oh I have seen a few DVD rips that are a tiny bit better but on a rip all your gonna get is max 4.1 gigs and most people on cheap discs stay around 3.7 or 3.8 gigs, I use the Primecdiscs from Ritek that I got from Sop4tech and out of 100 maybe 5or 6 I had to toss and that was because I made a mistake, warning, never stick in a blank DVD-R with any type of sratch or dust on them they will give you the U11.

[jrittenh]

Ummm...I've seen enough stuff on these machines choking on Macrovision, so I'm not so sure. In 99% of the cases, I'd not bother duping a DVD...if I really want it, I'll buy it as a keeper. The only time I wouldn't do so would be if I really wanted it and the only way I could have it, period, is via a dupe. Not for sale, not available, etc.

warning, never stick in a blank DVD-R with any type of sratch or dust on them they will give you the U11.

I can believe this. With cheaper disks, I say you'd better look before you burn. There's nothing quite as frustrating as getting U11s at the end of a burn.

[filmbuffshawn]

I've had the v11 error problem on my 100 spindle of Primedisc (Ritek) from Shop4Tech. It always happens at the same place. I put a virgin dvd-r in and start to record. After it records for about 40 seconds to the RAM memory it will flash the v11 message and shut down. When I power up the disk goes to recover mode. After that the disk is perfect. I had at least 20 that got the v11 error, but after recovery the disks worked without fault. Unfortunately, now I have to start a recording session of around 1 minute before I can start recording a movie. It seems other people have the same problem. I hope there will a lot more feedback on this subject, and maybe some remedies.

[jrittenh]

Bizarre. Well, I have a brand new box of Riteks, a new E30 connected up to the bedroom TiVo, and I got word last night to come up and exchange (bring the extra cables, remote, etc) the one in their repair department for a new one (to go next to the living room TiVo). *crosses fingers hard* Wish me luck.