[mythtv-users] HDHomerun tuner

Gary Buhrmaster gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com
Thu Nov 21 18:29:39 UTC 2013


On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 6:12 PM, Craig Treleaven <ctreleaven at cogeco.ca> wrote:
> At 6:02 PM +0000 11/21/13, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
>>
>> However, the other possibility is that your power supply
>> is going bad.  The HDHRs are known to have power
>> supplies that go bad,
>
>
> Assuming one has a cheap digital multimeter, how, exactly, would one
> ascertain that the power supply was good or marginal?  Under voltage? Low
> amerage?  Missing magic smoke?  ...  ;)

If the PS is the SW20-S050-15, it is so well
known to be faulty, you just presume it is
(SiliconDust used to send out replacements
just by opening a ticket 5 or more years ago;
I have no idea regarding their current policies
for such old devices).

The problem is (often) voltage ripple (a common
fault with these POS power supplies is the caps
go bad).  While better equipment can measure
ripple directly, most cheap DVMs can measure
it by setting the display to AC voltage.  Note that
you can only do the measurement while the PS
is under load.  I do not know the specs on the
HDHR, but more than about 50mv is probably
suspicious.

In 95%(*) of the cases, it is just easier to test
by replacing the PS and see if it improves
things.

Gary

(*) Made up statistic.


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