My A3 sat untouched for about 3 days. It was set up to record shows from Retro and COZI every day. I've been trying to record that WWII stuff for my dad from Retro and My Favorite Martian.
I would EXPECT it to run those tasks on it's own, as scheduled without me having to reboot it every bleeping day.
So my dad came by today and I wanted to show him the war stuff I had been recording for him and when I switched on the screen for the A3 it was locked up and the screen was covered with a bunch of small, bright green horizontal lines.
It was dead to the world. I pulled the power cord and waited 10 seconds. I plugged it back in and it it said "boot" on the LED display, the initial A3 boot screen came up and that was it. It just stuck on that and wouldn't go past it.
So then I pulled the power cord AGAIN. And waited. And plugged it back in and watched it get stuck on boot. And again. And again. And again.. After about SIX attempts to get the stupid thing to boot I gave up and pulled the power cord and left it sitting for about half an hour while I worked on converting a video tape for my dad. Then after he left I tried it again and this time it came up with the "Android is updating" screen and after sitting on that for 20 minutes, locked up, I pulled the power cord again. And another run of "Android is updating"... But this time is completed and rebooted itself. BUT, it was in F****** ARABIC !!!
It came up as if it were just being booted for the very first time ever and made me go through the setup routine and I SELECTED ENGLISH but it was still in freaking arabic and I could not make it go back to English no matter what.
I rebooted it two more times and it finally switched to English and I go through the setup routine.
And of course it had nothing for my satellites. It was asking me to scan for satellites as it was unaware of any.
I went back to the system menu and went to the restore option and I told it to restore a recent backup from a few weeks ago when I was certain that it was functioning correctly.
I do make backups at least every other week and have probably 40+ backups, I don't know, it's a lot. Plus I have the factory clean backup that I have that I did the very minute it came back from repair last year.
I selected to restore everything. Most things restored but the Amiko satellite downloader did not and will not restore no matter which backup I try to restore from. It's there, I've backed it up but it refuses to restore.
The Amiko Software Downloader is present and functional but the satellite downloader refuses to restore. I tell it to restore it and it says that it restored it but when I go to look for it, it's not there.
I've never had to use it but it's supposed to be there and I expect it to be there, just incase I ever do need it. I would hate to have to enter and entire satellite in by hand, one little bit at a time.
I've done that before and it is not fun.
For the record, I have the latest rom installed 2.0.73 and the Eurotrash 0.5 so all of that is up to date.
I do not use it for ANYTHING other than an FTA satellite tuner. I do not use it on the internet for anything at all, ever. I don't use it to stream video, I don't browse the internet with it, I don't do anything at all with it except watch FTA.
The ONLY channels I watch on it are Retro, Russia Today (very rarely) COZI and PBS on 125w.
I was trying to record that crusade in Europe and Pacific series for my dad, I record My Favorite Martian daily and on weekends for myself and I recorded a few things about NASA from PBS on 125.
That is all I us it for. I leave it powered up 100% of the time. I do not ever turn it off until it poops it's pants and I have to pull the power cord. It shares a screen with one of my Mac screens, It's meant to run 'in the background' so to speak, I expect it to run, record things on schedule and BLOODY WORK when I switch the screen to the STB so I can watch Doctor Who at 9pm. But more times than not I find it locked up and unresponsive and then I spend an hour unplugging and replugging the stupid thing then having to restore backups to get my satellites/channels back. I haven't installed any shady apps, I absolutely do not trust ANYTHING to do with google or android so I just don't use the internet features and I don't install apps from any source. I installed maybe 4 apps from the google play store last year but that was all, I haven't installed any new apps on it this year because I don't trust it.
This thing has been nothing but trouble from day one. Yes, I broke it on day one and after I learned my lesson and paid $25 to send it back to be put back to factory original I HAVE NOT fiddled with it. I have not messed with things I shouldn't mess with and I've made regular backups. But it's ALWAYS been trouble.
THIS Amiko A3 is absolutely unreliable and I regret buying it. I am quite unhappy with this tuner.
As much as I paid for this thing I expected much more reliability. Reliability of this thing is ZERO.
I have zero tolerance for machines that don't work right. There's an extremely high probability that I will put a bullet through this thing in the very near future and when I do I'm going to put it on youtube, vimeo and facebook.
Surely I can not be the only one having this much trouble. And this thing has been nothing but trouble.
As for the fridge site, I'm sorry but I don't care to participate there, the atmosphere there is not one that I consider to be compatible with my views of life and the world in general.
I created an account there so I can download updates but I will not participate in the forums there. No offense intended but that's just not for me.
I don't want to say anything further about that because of forum rules here.
I do not see any way to resolve this problem, it is a persistent, recurring problem. The next time it locks up will probably be the last time.
I'll borrow a gun from someone and take this thing out of the city limits where I can put it out of my misery.
