Not the Homecast again

We came home yesterday from an overnight stay in the Hunter Valley (doesn't that sound nice - in reality we stayed overnight at my in-laws') and lo and behold, what was to greet us on our arrival was a dead Homecast Personal Video Recorder.

This machine has been not totally reliable, although it is a very handy piece of technology and means we haven't used a video cassette for a number of years now.  But it simply wouldn't boot up.  It's not completely dead - it passes through the RF signal to the TV, and the hard drive spins up all right, but as for it proceeding beyond these rudimentary features, forget it.

It's been the subject of a few blog entries in the past, actually, if you want to go searching.  It cooked out its hard drive last year and that had to be replaced, which turned out to be quite a simple repair that I did.  (And the 320 gig drive was replaced with a 500 gig drive as it was cheaper to buy a 500 gig drive at the time).  For now, however, it's a little bit too technical and it's going over to meet an electronics technician at West Gosford in about ten minutes.  Fingers are crossed, as I'm all set up to use it now re software and cables and everything else.  The lovely thing about it is you can get digital broadcasts off the machine, on to a computer, edit them (top & tail and if on non-ABC cut the ads out) and burn them to DVD.  Download a DVD cover for a movie and with a digital input, your DVD is almost as good as a commercial number, minus the special features, of course.

I wish it well.  It's in the front seat of the car at the moment in its original box for transport.