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  1. Member jkozura's Avatar
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    I have been following the threads on this and other sites that refer to the Philips DVDR3455h/37 and other Philips models.
    Last week, my unit froze while finalizing a DVD. I had been anticipating that the hard drive in the unit was going to eventually die, as it had been running for about 10 years now, off and on. I thought I was prepared as I had another WD 160 GB drive, very similar to the original drive, and a CD that I had burned the firmware update files to.
    For some reason, I don't seem to be able to get the unit to proceed past "LOAD". When I power the unit on, the front panel shows "PHILIPS", then "LOAD". The optical drive starts reading the CD, and head seeking sounds can be heard for a few seconds. The drive tray then opens, and the process repeats.
    I have been working in IT for about 20 years, so I am familiar with most repair techniques.
    I have tried several CDs of different ages and media formulations.
    I have tried using a different optical drive, which was a DVD burner from a PC. The drive had successfully read CDs and DVDs to the Philips unit when I had used it as a stand in while replacing the belt on the original drive. It was able to burn but not finalize a disc though.
    I have tried the WD 160GB I had designated as the replacement drive, as well as a WD 40GB and a WD 80GB. They all seen to POST then go idle when the unit is powered up.
    The unit does not seem to recognize any front panel key codes. It doesn't do anything until the power button is pressed. The power button is not recognized if any other buttons are being pressed at the same time.
    The TV shows the waterdrop wallpaper and the Philips logo when the unit is powered on. I don't see any other on screen info.
    I have read the service manual and all it shows is to use the firmware CD whether you need to upgrade the firmware or initialize a new drive.
    Does anyone know a way to get me past this roadblock? Are there any front panel key combinations, or remote control commands that can get my unit running again? I am going into withdrawals.
    I am planning to check to see if I can image the old drive, but it was making mechanical noises that to me in the past have meant "Forget it". I was hoping to find a drive image file of an empty but DVDR formatted drive online somewhere, but didn't. Has anyone ever imaged a drive from a working DVDR3455 with Ghost or another imaging program so that new drives could be made from it? If you have, I would love to have a copy. An image on an empty drive should be small if compression is used. I will image my drive if I can get the unit working again.
    Thanks for your time,
    John
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  2. Member hech54's Avatar
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    Yank in Europe
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    I'm not sure I follow. The unit's burner failed to finalize a DVD......so why are you talking about the hard drive?
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  3. Member
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    Feb 2006
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    have you tried unplugging the unit and let it sit unplugged for a few hours??
    and try this here - http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/cpindex.pl?ctn=DVDR3455H/37&dct=QAC&faqview=1&mid=L...w_partial.html
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  4. Banned
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
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    Freedonia
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    We have a few people who may be able to help, but our main Philips/Magnavox expert pulled a dick move a few years ago and edited all of his posts here and replaced them with a link to a forum at http://www.avsforum.com. The current Philips/Magnavox thread there has over 800 pages on it, which unfortunately is fairly typical for how AVSForum operates. Their threads get so big that it becomes almost impossible to get anything out of them, but you can always try there if you can't get help here.

    I can only tell you that most DVD recorders have specialized burners that can't be replaced with off the shelf components. They're not really consumer repairable in the main sense of that term, but if you can find the exact model burner somewhere and it's in good shape, you could swap that out. You could have multiple issues going on where the burner AND the hard drive are both in need of repair/replacement. To be blunt, after 10 years it's probably not worth the trouble to try to fix this as it may be almost impossible to find the right burner any more. You should consider getting a new model.

    WalMart sells Magnavox DVD recorders (Magnavox took over the Philips DVD recorder line, at least in North America), but the prices are no bargain. Magnavox is just about the only company left that still makes DVD recorders in North America and they have a special deal with WalMart to sell them. Periodically there are unfounded rumors that Magnavox is going to stop making them, which drives the prices sky high at WalMart. Panic stricken buyers buy the recorders in bulk and then Magnavox comes out and says "I guess we can keep making them for a while longer." at which point the prices stabilize but are still probably higher than they should be.
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  5. Member
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    The info about the drive being "probably unavailable" is correct from day one. The manufacturer suggested that I could possibly order a shipping container quantity . . after many tries of using Manderin to cross the language barrier to get the exact model. Polaroid Recorders had a drive that stands in . . and then that brand started using a serial burner.

    I succesfully used a PC DVD burner as a stand in on one Philips 3455H.

    I do not know what your specific hard drive problem might be.Another HD might be had by using "Format" via the software disc of firmware upgrade on another 3455H machine . . then switch back to that machine. The jumper on the HD must be right (20 pin ribbon side of jumper group on the oddball drive I successfully moved from a Polaroid recorder) for the switch to be successful.
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  6. Member jkozura's Avatar
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    I think I may have put too much detail into my original post. The problem is this:
    My original hard drive appears to have crashed. It was making some unusual sounds, and the DVDR unit started malfunctioning.
    I replaced the hard drive with one that was nearly identical. It was a Western Digital 160GB IDE/ATA drive.
    I am having trouble getting the DVDR unit to read the and run the disc that is required to format the new hard drive.
    The unit will not function until the new hard drive has been formatted. Currently the hard drive has no formatted partitions on it. Previously, it was in a Windows computer, so it probably had a FAT32 or NTFS partition on it.

    It sure would be great if someone could post an image (Ghost, Linux, etc.) of a hard drive formatted in the Philips format that could be used to initialize new hard drives.

    In the meantime, I have replaced the Philips DVDR3455h/37 with a Magnavox MDR535H/F7. I am happy with this unit. The HDMI upscaling works great with standard level DirecTV and my 53 inch LCD. FYI, I live in the country and I am on a budget.
    I think my best bet with the Philips unit is going to be to try to clone whatever is accessible from the old WD 160GB to the new one. I will post back with the results.

    Thanks for your time,
    John Kozura IV
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