Articles > Supernet 8000T-PVR Digital Set Top Box Repair
Sold by many cut-price chain stores (such as ALDI), the Supernet 8000T is the same internally as the Wintal X10, Wintal X10A, and the Digicrystal 9000.
They come with an 80GB hard disk drive as standard, which can record up to 28 hours of standard definition digital video. They have analogue video outputs, and are targeted at CRT TV owners who want to watch free-to-air DVB-T transmissions.
These PVRs are versatile, small and great to use, but they suffer from the dreaded 'Capacitor Plague' or 'Capacitor Rot' problems. At first, the units may crash randomly, but eventually as the problem worsens, it will get to the stage where the PVR won't boot up or turn on at all. Other erratic behaviour has been observed, including old recordings on the hard drive not able to be played back, and recordings missing from the list.
To fix
Replace the capacitors around the diode rectifiers in the PSU's secondary. The diodes are attached to heatsinks, which do get warm. Over time, the cheap capacitors will dry out from the heat.
Original types include 1000uF at 16 volts. Replacement with 1500 or 2200uF 16v ones (if available) would be ideal. Ensure you obtain the smaller, low profile types. Low ESR types would be desirable, but not necessary.
The hard drive is the most power-demanding part of the PVR. Upon plugging in power, the hard drive will spin up. If the PSU is faulty, the rest of the unit won't get enough power to boot up properly. Although, if the unit has already been powered on for some time without recording or playback, the circuitry does put the hard drive to sleep to conserve power (thus reducing the heat).
The unit is built with only convective cooling in mind. More often than not, people will stack the unit on top of a TV (CRT types, which were the target purpose of these PVRs), or worse still, on top of a stack of other AV equipment such as VCRs and DVD players. The unit would get very warm, especially if the hard drive is running.