The Magic Smoke Left my HR23-700 DVR today

I’m glad I was home when it happened. I was watching TV with my wife (Netflix – trying to figure out if we liked “Mad Men” or not) when we started smelling something electrical burning.

A quick survey of the house found that the smell was strongest in the TV room and then I noticed smoke coming out of the back of our entertainment unit.

I powered everything off immediately and hauled out the electronic pieces on that side of the unit which made the source of the problem either my Blu-Ray player and our DirecTV DVR.

Once we were sure what we were dealing with, I turned the power back on and then plugged both units back in. The Blu-Ray player seems fine but the DVR is now just a brick. Once that “Magic Smoke” is released, there’s no going back I’m afraid.

It’s just as well, we were trialing not using the DVR anyway (maybe it was miffed that it was being ignored?). I’m going to cancel our DirecTV tonight. This just forced my hand.

Just a warning to any other HR23-700 DirecTV DVR owners… I’m not sure what you can do to prevent this issue or what precipitated the failure of my unit but I won’t replace it. I’ll get a different brand should we go back to Satellite or Cable. I’ve never been particularly fond of the UI anyway – it’s always be slow and clunky compared to a TIVO.

2 thoughts on “The Magic Smoke Left my HR23-700 DVR today”

  1. A similar thing happened to my HR23-700 this morning..early!
    Awakened at about 7AM this morning to loud “pops”, about 3 in total over a minute or so.
    Acrid smoke and smell..had to be electrical. The unit was in a separate location, so it was easy to spot the culprit by the remaining smoke and smell.
    After a few minutes, I replugged in the unit ..dead as a doornail.
    I was “googling” for any further info on failures on this unit, when I came across the previous e-mail from Marc.
    Now to call Directv support or the complaint line…hopefully, not in Asia.!
    I am no longer in contract with Directv.

  2. Different, but the same.
    Mine just wont power up. I took it apart and it appears that the power supply capacitors have been overstressed/overheated. This would explain the “pops” the second poster described.
    I’ll post more when I dig deeper later.

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