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Noisy PVR
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Hello everyone - I've never been here before, please be gentle ;o)
As it will become clear, I have very limited technical knowledge or
know how. I have recently bought a box for watching freeview on which
also has a hard drive. I bought the cheapest one I found which also
had a topup tv slot on it.
Now I have my new box and I do like freeview and love the hard disk and
pausing live tv thing. But the box is really noisy. There's a general
hum coming from the box (!) and it makes the woofer on the telly hum,
too. The sky box didn't hum, nor did it make the woofer hum.
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As with PCs, the noise could be coming from a variety of sources: the
hard disc itself, a cooling fan (if fitted) or the internal power
supply. The hum coming from the box and from your woofer seems to be
the major problem. It suggests power supply trouble, and since the box
is new I think you'd be entitled to take it back to the supplier and
demand a replacement.
As for the hard drive, in a quiet room these can make enough noise to
be disturbing, and if you had a PVR that was out of guarantee it would
be worth thinking about replacing it -- preferably with a
higher-capacity drive. Faster drives tend to be noisier. With my own
PVR, I reduced the noise to an acceptable level by swapping the 7200
rpm drive I had been using (the commonest drive speed in modern
desktop PCs) for a 5400 rpm model. This was still easily fast enough
for the purpose and it had the further advantage of running much
cooler.
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Is there any way I can know before I buy another box, whether or not it
will also be noisy? I expect it's because I bought the cheapest I
found. I'd happily buy a more expensive one (well, happyish...!) if I
knew it wouldn't hum.
Ho hum. I hope you can help me.
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