My DVR522 is acting really weird tonight. At first I thought "oh great, they've screwed up the software again" and though that is always a strong possibility I think it's something else. (warning: the rest of this rant is slightly off topic, i.e. not necessarily related to the L290/L291 software release)
Our DVR doesn't usually get quite as intense usage as it has gotten tonight. Recording olympics on local NBC in addition to Sci Fi Friday stuff, plus playback of olympics about 2 hours delayed. And no telling how fragmented the drive is, I have about 12 hours available.
About two hours ago I pressed "play" on the currently recording olympics DVR event, every few minutes the picture would just freeze till I hit any of the DVR directional or skip buttons. Also lots of pixelating and audio drops like in the older softwares.
I finally figured out after about 20 minutes, I think the new entertainment cabinet we got for Christmas is the culprit, this combined with the heavy drive activity is causing the thing to overheat and malfunction. The sound of the cooling fan coming on periodically confirmed it for me. Before it went in this cabinet, I had never heard the cooling fan, EVER, except the spin up during reboots.
So for the past hour and forty-odd minutes I've got all the doors and panels open on the cabinet and the DVR decided to start back behaving normally. It hasn't malfunctioned and I haven't heard the fan at all for about an hour now.
I think I need to: (1) cut some big holes in the top of the entertainment cabinet, maybe put in some fans to blow the air out the top, and (2) pull the top cover off the DVR so the heat can escape.
The hard drive is already outside of the case in a removable tray with its own fan (from the mad scientist 522 drive swap thread you might remember some months back), I think its the actual electronics inside the box that are overheating, not necessarily the hard drive though the harder it works, (thrashing due to fragmentation and multiple tasks) the more heat it generates.
I personally think that 95% of all the complaints ever since the 522 came out are malfunctions caused by heat (the other 5% are actual software problems). What do you all think?