thinkjim.com » television

V+ Hard Disk Upgrade

thinkjim — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:21:10 +0000

A user on the digitalspy forums has successful upgraded the hard disk in his V+ box. The Poster known as jamjam has extended the recording time from 80 hours to an astonishing 400 hours.

The stock 160gb hard drive was replaced with a new Seagate 750GB Ultra IDE Drive (Model No. ST3750640A). From the forum discussion it appears that the upgrade was relatively straightforward, and simply involved physical removal the old drive and replacement with the new drive. Jamjam reported that on first boot the V+ box automatically reformatted the new drive without any user input – which has been working perfectly since. The only minor niggle is that the V+ menu only displays 80 hours of available space after upgrade, although this number only decreases to 79 hours after 5 hours have been recorded. It would seem that V+ calculates the number of free hours based on the percentage of free disk space.

Check out the details here.

Please note that V+ users do not own their V+ boxes. V+ boxes remain property of Virgin Media, therefore this is one of those ‘do not try this at home’ upgrades.

Replacement V+ Box

thinkjim — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:00:58 +0000

I had my old Telewest TV Drive (now called V+ box) replaced recently. Unfortunately the HDMI port had become faulty and this was causing interference / picture cut outs. I understand that there is a known fault with the HDMI port on TV Drives which can cause the solder joint to fail. The new box is painted matt black (instead of silver) and seems fine.

Reliant Robin Space Shuttle Launch!

thinkjim — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 20:00:15 +0000

The UK’s Space Programme moved one step closer to reality this year thanks to …. Top Gear! The BBC’s team took a Reliant Robin , turned it into a space shuttle, and then launched it!! take a look at the two part drama unfold:

Part One

Part Two

Good old British engineering, best in the world!

Dead TV Drive

thinkjim — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 20:00:50 +0000

Well, I’ve had the TV Drive for 10 days and unfortunately i woke on Sunday to discover it has gone the ‘way of the pear’. Looks like Telewest tried to remotely install some sort of update on Saturday evening and its caused the TV Drive to get stuck in a rebooting loop. Which is a bit unfortunate. I’m now waiting for an engineer.

Having used the TV Drive up until Sunday I have to say it is a good bit of kit, even if it is a bit buggy!

Telewest TV Drive Launches

thinkjim — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:00:42 +0000

Telewest’s TV Drive launched on Wednesday! got the order in by 11am. Apparently they’d had 100,000 calls by that point. The installation is 50 Pounds(GBP) for existing customers (unless you keep your existing set top box as a second box), and there is a 12 month contract.

Thanks to the Digital Spy Forums for the advanced notice. I did preregister for the service, but they didn’t contact me to let me know it was being launched.

The install is booked for the 16th March!