# Fried Board on HR23-700



## DenaliMike (Aug 18, 2010)

This was scary tonight. All of a sudden this evening we had noxious fumes fill the house. We got the kids to one area of the house and I started running around to figure out where they were coming from. I determined it was from one of my receivers --- an HR23-700. That unit had stopped working a couple of days ago, I had spoken to DIRECTV yesterday, and they were in process of shipping me a new one. (Unfortunately they say another HR23.) I had not unplugged the one that stopped working. Little did I know what would happen this evening. I could not help but open the box after this occurred this evening. One of the components/resistors is totally fried as well as the surrounding board. 

Has anyone heard of this happening? The funny thing is that this is the only receiver I have that is not in an AV cabinet. i.e., it had totally unrestricted airflow around the whole unit. 

I called retention saying that I had no confidence in getting another HR23 after this situation. It could have been MUCH worse had we not been home and immediately unplugged the unit. They said they could have someone come out and look at the installation after the new unit arrived. I don't know what good that will be as this was internal to the unit with nothing around it. Alternatively they said a could upgrade to a different model, they would pick up the cost, but that would require a new 24 month agreement. That does not seem right as well. 

Thoughts? Recommendations of how to proceed? Thanks.


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## jimmie57 (Jun 26, 2010)

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=211032

FYI: When an electrical item stops working it should be unplugged.


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## MysteryMan (May 17, 2010)

jimmie57 said:


> http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=211032
> 
> FYI: When an electrical item stops working it should be unplugged.


+1


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

That happened to me with the same make/model of DVR on Wednesday night at exactly 8:00:01PM. It also happened almost exactly 3 years to the date prior with an HR20-700. I have yet another HD DVR in the bedroom that refuses to run on line voltage below 116v, contrary to spec. I don't think the power supply circuits on these DVRs are very robust.

I'm just having them send me another DVR, of whatever kind arrives. I'm not going to get excited about what model is what until they finally make one that is demonstrably and reliably faster than what the current models are.


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## Ed-Williams (Sep 8, 2006)

DenaliMike,

How did you get that picture of “MY” HR-23-700? 

A few days ago I experienced exactly the same; I spent some time with it and found most components on the power supply showed short circuit, so I gave up and sent the unit home to DTV.

Your posting came at a time when I was considering checking my home’s electrical wiring, but now I believe it is just the unit. What a shame that the designers of this product did not made it with better protection so it would not catch fire! 

Good luck with the new unit.

Regards,
Ed.


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## TMan (Oct 31, 2007)

Wow. How close was this failure to starting an actual fire? It sure scorched that resistor and the circuit board. Was it "done" at that point or could it have grown into sustained combustion and spread to nearby objects? That's scary stuff. 

The OP didn't mention whether he deliberately had to extinguish anything, but still...


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## moghedien (Dec 3, 2007)

You can send an email to Ellen Filipiak of customer care...

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/global/contentPageIFnorail.jsp?assetId=P4960016#h:557.637


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

It's unlikely that would have sustained a fire.


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

JeffBowser said:


> It's unlikely that would have sustained a fire.


I agree. A fire such as this is most assuredly a fire caused by a shorted component in the PS. Once the component burns up there is nothing left to create the short (which results in lowered resistance and high current), and it becomes an open circuit instead (infinite resistance and no current). Assuming the component "on fire" doesn't ignite other items close to it (and none of those items are combustible without high current flowing through them) that should be the end of it. Dramatic, yes, but relatively safe, and chance is low that it would burn down the house. Also, the short will eventually trip a service panel breaker, also stopping the current.

It's not common. I have worked in TV stations (which literally house thousands of pieces of actively-powered equipment) for decades and can count on one hand the number of items that have burned up, or at least have burned up dramatically when there was someone there close enough to experience the acrid smell. And in each case, the scenario was as I described; it burned out on its own and nothing else was affected.

What can burn up? Theoretically, anything that has power applied to it, including resistors (more likely) capacitors (less likely) or the voltage regulator chip in the PS (most likely). DC voltages and currents are highest in the PS, and lower in system boards, meaning the drama is more likely if the PS shorts. That is also where 110 VAC is converted to lower DC voltages. Sometimes a cooling fan bearing will freeze, and overheating causes resistive components to change value, starting a vicious cycle of more current, more heat, etc.

But it does make one a little uncomfortable that we have electronic components running 24/7 (DVRs) that we can't shut off when we leave the house like we can the TV or dishwasher. There is a lot of UL-approved safety in place, but that's hardly a guarantee of no drama.


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## TMan (Oct 31, 2007)

Thanks for the response, TomCat. 

And these days, so many things aren't really "off" when they're turned off, such as televisions and stereo equipment.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

There's a lot of items in the typical house today that are 'on' 24/7. My house looks like a starfield with the LEDs or other lights twinkling at night. Items have a timer or some minimal use of electricity. Coffee pots, Microwave, dishwasher, stove, refrigerator are just a few in the kitchen with at least an LED or LCD display.

Unless you unplug an item, turning off a surge strip or some other switch is no guarantee that a surge can't jump the switch gap to fry something downfield. And the damage doesn't necessarily show up after you hear the thunder.

We had a tree by the garage struck by lightning a couple of summers ago. Nothing smoked or caught fire in the house, but I was finding and replacing telephone and network problems / equipment for six months.

It's amazing we don't have more house fires.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Ed-Williams said:


> DenaliMike,
> 
> How did you get that picture of "MY" HR-23-700?
> 
> ...


Look at the picture again. That little round black thing on the right bottom of the picture is the fuse that's supposed to protect the Power Supply which is where the burned resistor is. They do protect it, but no correctly, obviously.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

TomCat said:


> I agree. A fire such as this is most assuredly a fire caused by a shorted component in the PS. Once the component burns up there is nothing left to create the short (which results in lowered resistance and high current), and it becomes an open circuit instead (infinite resistance and no current). Assuming the component "on fire" doesn't ignite other items close to it (and none of those items are combustible without high current flowing through them) that should be the end of it. Dramatic, yes, but relatively safe, and chance is low that it would burn down the house. Also, the short will eventually trip a service panel breaker, also stopping the current.
> 
> It's not common. I have worked in TV stations (which literally house thousands of pieces of actively-powered equipment) for decades and can count on one hand the number of items that have burned up, or at least have burned up dramatically when there was someone there close enough to experience the acrid smell. And in each case, the scenario was as I described; it burned out on its own and nothing else was affected.
> 
> ...


No matter how you look at it, the fuse should have blown. It obviously didn't and I'd be concerned about that. Hmm. If that resistor flashed open, the fuse might be pardoned for not blowing. Not sure about that, have to see a drawing to know for sure.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

TMan said:


> Thanks for the response, TomCat.
> 
> And these days, so many things aren't really "off" when they're turned off, such as televisions and stereo equipment.


One of the reasons my home and it's contents are insured for ~ one million dollars. I've only had one HR start burning, it was a 21-200 and put out enough smoke to wake my son up. Thankfully.

Rich


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

TMan said:


> Thanks for the response, TomCat.
> 
> And these days, so many things aren't really "off" when they're turned off, such as televisions and stereo equipment.


You're most welcome, and also correct.

The difference between a TV turned "off" or a computer monitor in sleep mode vs. a DVR is that the DVR is fully powered all of the time (even though the front panel may be dark), and that the TV or computer monitor is powered by a mere trickle of current until turned fully "on". My point is that the odds are much greater of this happening to something like a DVR that never turns off, even in the current DTV sleep mode, which apparently doesn't do much and does not really save power other than if connected to a TV that powers off when the video signal drops. I try to keep my "vampire" wallwarts plugged into a power strip that I can shut off, but DVRs can't be, practically speaking.

The good news is that DTV is listed just today in the list of STB vendors that are pledging to find ways to cut power consumption and there is legislation pending behind that. I still don't know how you run a DVR that way, unless you spin down the HDD and then spin it back up just before a recording happens, keeping only the timer circuit powered all of the time. Possible, but maybe not enough to really address the problem of safety all that much. Time will tell. You also need an OS that can sleep.

Another thing is that what may appear to be a fuse is really a surge protector or a breaker. Gradually-increasing current will pass right through that, and some fuses are poorly rated, letting this sort of damage occur before firing. They can fail also. There is a point where higher current can pass through a fuse (below its rating) and still do damage. The reason is that you can't use a fuse rated just above the normal current requirements, or then you have an issue of fuses popping every time the wall voltage fluctuates just a little bit. The PS regulates a wide range of house AC voltages into unwavering (for the most part) DC voltages, but failed components in the PS or even the system boards can still allow enough current to burn stuff up. Fuses are not foolproof.

Many of the PS failures are due to fluctuating or surging AC from the wall. A UPS will help, but is also not foolproof, since the PS can still fail even if only fed proper AC voltages.


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

Rich said:


> One of the reasons my home and it's contents are insured for ~ one million dollars. I've only had one HR start burning, it was a 21-200 and put out enough smoke to wake my son up. Thankfully.
> 
> Rich


Well, Rich, the odds are a little higher for a guy with 700 or more DVRs on his account.


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## zhezhang (May 8, 2010)

I don't see a fuse in the picture. 
That black round thing on the right bottom looks to me like a torx head mounting screw for mounting the PCB to the chassis.


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## jimmie57 (Jun 26, 2010)

zhezhang said:


> I don't see a fuse in the picture.
> That black round thing on the right bottom looks to me like a torx head mounting screw for mounting the PCB to the chassis.


+1


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

> The good news is that DTV is listed just today in the list of STB vendors that are pledging to find ways to cut power consumption and there is legislation pending behind that. I still don't know how you run a DVR that way, unless you spin down the HDD and then spin it back up just before a recording happens, keeping only the timer circuit powered all of the time. Possible, but maybe not enough to really address the problem of safety all that much. Time will tell. You also need an OS that can sleep.


Didn't the Ultimate TV DVRs actually shut down?



> Another thing is that what may appear to be a fuse is really a surge protector or a breaker.


Nope it's a fuse. Pop the top of that little round black thing and you'll see the fuse link. I did it because I was surprised the PS didn't have a glass fuse such as you see in the earlier models.



> Gradually-increasing current will pass right through that, and some fuses are poorly rated, letting this sort of damage occur before firing. They can fail also. There is a point where higher current can pass through a fuse (below its rating) and still do damage. The reason is that you can't use a fuse rated just above the normal current requirements, or then you have an issue of fuses popping every time the wall voltage fluctuates just a little bit. The PS regulates a wide range of house AC voltages into unwavering (for the most part) DC voltages, but failed components in the PS or even the system boards can still allow enough current to burn stuff up. Fuses are not foolproof.


Actually, I trust fuses more than CBs. Just an opinion. They do die after a while. You don't need a fuse rated above the normal current requirements, you need a fuse that will not blow when inrush current comes into play. There are a variety of fuses out there that allow for that. Most are called "time delay" fuses.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

TomCat said:


> Well, Rich, the odds are a little higher for a guy with 700 or more DVRs on his account.


I hear that. Yeah, that's why we got that policy. I don't think I'll ever forget that 21-200 smoking away in my son's room.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

zhezhang said:


> I don't see a fuse in the picture.
> That black round thing on the right bottom looks to me like a torx head mounting screw for mounting the PCB to the chassis.


Just got a headache staring at that picture. You might be right, but that's where the fuses for the 24s are and that's what they look like. Looking at it, if you're right, it might not even be the PS. I've never had a 23 apart, owned one, but it crapped out on me within a week or so. But if you took a picture of a 24's PS, you'd see the same thing.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Just looked at a picture of the 23's insides and you're right, that is a Torx screw. I can't find a fuse on the PS from that picture. Must be one. The resistor that burned is on the PS and the PS is detachable from what I can see.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Just looked at a picture of the 23's PS and I can't find a fuse anywhere. That black thing is definitely a screw. 

Rich


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

My HR23-700 blew the exact same resistor.

Toast

Mike


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## Scott Kocourek (Jun 13, 2009)

I imagine waking to the smell of a burnt resistor would be a scary thing, we burned plenty of them in school and it's a smell you don't easily forget.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Scott Kocourek said:


> I imagine waking to the smell of a burnt resistor would be a scary thing, we burned plenty of them in school and it's a smell you don't easily forget.


Yup, just like a burning ballast with PCBs. My son's room stunk when the 21-200 started smoking, that's what woke him up.

Rich


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

Scott Kocourek said:


> I imagine waking to the smell of a burnt resistor would be a scary thing, we burned plenty of them in school and it's a smell you don't easily forget.


The minute I walked into the house with my daughter I went on a search to make sure there weren't any flames.

That's a smell that's hard to get out of the house too.

Mike


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## wrj (Nov 23, 2006)

I just now have read through this thread and quite frankly, I hope DTV is jumping on this issue. At first, I thought it was an isolated instance but apparently, others are having this issue. 

It is one thing for a piece of electronic equipment to stop working but it is another for it to start smoking. This is never a good situation not only for possible property damage (or worse) but also for public image.

DTV should be more than a little concerned and moving rapidly for an answer.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

wrj said:


> I just now have read through this thread and quite frankly, I hope DTV is jumping on this issue. At first, I thought it was an isolated instance but apparently, others are having this issue.
> 
> It is one thing for a piece of electronic equipment to stop working but it is another for it to start smoking. This is never a good situation not only for possible property damage (or worse) but also for public image.
> 
> DTV should be more than a little concerned and moving rapidly for an answer.


With a couple reported out of literally hundreds of thousands in service? I assure you you can go just about anywhere on the net and find reports of a couple of smoking pieces of electronics for just about every piece of consumer electronics on the planet. Monitors, computers, tvs, etc....


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## wrj (Nov 23, 2006)

CCarncross said:


> With a couple reported out of literally hundreds of thousands in service? I assure you you can go just about anywhere on the net and find reports of a couple of smoking pieces of electronics for just about every piece of consumer electronics on the planet. Monitors, computers, tvs, etc....


True but big problems always start as little problems. All I'm saying is if I was DTV, I would be having my engineers looking into this. I was in product development for years. If we learned of failures like this, we would get our hands on the failed units and investigate. I just don't like the units frying in people's house. Catastrophic failures are one thing but not with smoking components with no evidence of large transients (e.g. lightning).


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

wrj said:


> True but big problems always start as little problems. All I'm saying is if I was DTV, I would be having my engineers looking into this. I was in product development for years. If we learned of failures like this, we would get our hands on the failed units and investigate. I just don't like the units frying in people's house. Catastrophic failures are one thing but not with smoking components with no evidence of large transients (e.g. lightning).


The HR23 is over four years old and there are already three different manufacturers making the HR24 as well has the HR34-700.

DIRECTV already knows how many of each model has failed so yes, they could easily be doing just as you would have done. Further, if it hasn't been discontinued it's likely to be soon.

I'm guessing if it ever became a problem they'll phase them all out and be done with them. Just a guess but it makes sense to me.

Mike


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

This thread is one of the main reasons I was pretty unhappy to get a HR23-700 that was stamped 2 years older than the one I had that just fried.


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## Lord Vader (Sep 20, 2004)

jimmie57 said:


> http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=211032
> 
> FYI: When an electrical item stops working it should be unplugged.


I just pour water on it. Makes for a wonderful light show.


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## Grapeguy (Dec 12, 2012)

Same EXACT thing happened to my HR23-700 today. I opened the case and found the same component as yours had shorted out, burning the plastic beneath. Horrible smell. I'm hoping it can be fixed by replacing the power board. However, I haven't been able to find a power board on line.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Grapeguy said:


> Same EXACT thing happened to my HR23-700 today. I opened the case and found the same component as yours had shorted out, burning the plastic beneath. Horrible smell. I'm hoping it can be fixed by replacing the power board. However, I haven't been able to find a power board on line.


You won't find the PS boards on the Net. I've seen one on eBay. Your best bet is to buy a 23 that's for sale on eBay for "parts". That means that the guy knows it's leased and can't be activated. You can usually get them for a low price. Just make sure the seller tells you the front lights come on.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

CCarncross said:


> With a couple reported out of literally hundreds of thousands in service? I assure you you can go just about anywhere on the net and find reports of a couple of smoking pieces of electronics for just about every piece of consumer electronics on the planet. Monitors, computers, tvs, etc....


Seems like more than a couple. Seems like a fair sample. I think.

Just reread the thread, it is only 3 or 4. Not a fair sample. Sorry.

Rich


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## MikeBtp (Jan 2, 2013)

I had two HR23 DVRs damage two different HDMI inputs on my TV a few months ago and no other damage anywhere in the box or the house. The HR23 still worked with component out but my HDMI was fried on the TV and the HR23. One box damaged one HDMI input, then DTV sent me another HR23 which damaged another of the HDMI inputs two weeks later when there was no lightning or rain or anything. After contacting DTV damage claims I got two repair estimates for my TV, when I really only needed one. The first one that I submitted was $750. Then I got one for $420 which I submitted only because I though DTV would do the right thing and I didn't want to screw them. Huge mistake. DTV claims tech said that since I live in Florida that lightning probably caused the damage, which is BS to me but a way out for them. After several months and phone calls I finally got a settlement for only half of the low estimate. When that credit was used up, I cancelled DTV (after having been with them for 13 years). 

Needless to say, DTV can't screw me any more.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

Personally, I have never heard of a piece of equipment damaging another like that unless there were massive power fluctuations in the house somewhere. And hte equipment doesnt do that actual damage, its just the fact they are connected together. Sorry, I'm not buying that either. The only reasonable explanations are weather, or power surges in your home due to faulty wiring/power outages.


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