Random Rants

[Harrison]

Wow! A tornado. Looks like the weather we have been experiencing moved over to Luxembourg. It really annoys me when the news never reports such events in other countries. With 24 hour news channels you would think they could cover more international news.

Were there many floods in your area?

Have you seen the current floods in the UK? Scotland, Wales and parts of Western England had some really bad flooding at the weekend. Seems to be getting bad everywhere.

[Demon Cleaner]

I have seen the floods everywhere lately, it's really horrible. I can also watch now the english news, as I mounted a new satellite dish covering from 13.0 to 28.2, so I get now all the free channels that they have at freesat.co.uk, good for my girlfriend, as german/french TV tend to dub their programs, like 95%.

In my area there was no flooding, there's not much water around, and the rain only comes to certain houses, which have big cellars, and they have then to pump it out, but that is quite rare.

And as I already mentioned, I live a bit uphill, so there's no possibility of any flooding ever happening.

[Harrison]

That's cool that you can pickup Freesat. Can you get all the BBC channels? I know they try to block them outside of the UK because of licensing (In the UK every household has to pay a yearly TV license fee of currently £145.50).

Also, if you can pickup Freesat then you are accessing the Astra 2 satellites, which are the Sky TV Satellites (as they utilise them to aks broadcast Freesat). I've read it is possible to unofficially use a Sky TV box outside of the UK and pick up Sky channels. Not sure if this still works or not.

as german/french TV tend to dub their programs

Yes, I've seen some and it can be quite funny how they are dubbed. On analogue Sky (before it switched over to digital years ago) we used to also get all of the other channels broadcast on the Astra satellites, so could pick up the RTL channels and many others. It was funny seeing things like the X-Files dubbed into German. They never tried to match the voices to the original actors, so one that originally had a soft voice would suddenly have a deep aggressive voice.

[Demon Cleaner]

Here's all the channels that you get: http://www.freesat.co.uk/what-you-get/our-channels

Yesterday I almost feared the worst when I booted up my NAS. I booted it up on Sunday, to check the network on the PC, and it booted up fine. I couldn't reach it though, as my router was not working, but as you know that's fixed now.

So yesterday evening I wanted to configure the new Fritzbox, then I also fired up the NAS again. Strangely it was stuck for over 30 minutes with the message "BOOTING UP" on the LCD. So I googled the problem, and as it was, it does this when there's a problem with the PSU. And there's a whole procedure to take if you wanna try getting it to work again, without any guarantee that it will actually help.

I just thought WTF!!! Now also my NAS has given up working!!! Tried to stay calm and switched it off again by holding down the power button. Switched off fine. So I unplugged it once from the power, waited 1 minute, and plugged it back in. Then I was praying (literally) for it to boot normally, and then it also did, leaving me with extraordinary happiness.

But this is the second device which had problems now when switching it on for the second time? Remember, my beamer was working fine when I tried it after the lightning strike, then when I came back from holidays, I switched it on the second time, and it wouldn't work anymore. Strange.

Hopefully I will not witness the same with some other devices. Still didn't boot up PS3, X360 and my new Oppo BD player for a second time. The beamer guy also didn't come yet to me, and also still didn't write me back. Hopefully he does soon.

EDIT: After this struggle, I bought an UPS yesterday, the APC Power-Saving Back-UPS Pro 550.



This one is 330W, I looked yesterday, and my Qnap 659 Pro II with 6 disks uses 46W. With full usage, the APC would run 10 minutes on batteries, but with only having 50W, it will last for approximately 1 hour.

It was test winner on several sites, and only costs 115€, I thought that this stuff was still a lot more expensive.

[Demon Cleaner]

Beamer and receiver got picked up today, there's nothing to do, they will go to repair.

The beamer's lamp is still intact, he guesses that it's some circuit board that has given up working.

Same for the Onkyo, did a firmware update, didn't help, also resetting it didn't help. Guess is that the HDMI circuit board is damaged.

Mede8er is also dead, tried analog video, updating firmware, removing HDD, nothing helped.

[Harrison]

A UPS definitely is the best solution for protection against power cuts and surges. Can your Qnap communicate with a UPS to power down when power failure occurs?

I've considered getting a UPS for some time to use with my home server that is on all the time so it will control it and power down the computer if a power cut happens.

[Demon Cleaner]

Can your Qnap communicate with a UPS to power down when power failure occurs?

Don't know yet, would be nice, as I cannot hook the PC to the UPS, which could then power down the NAS, but perhaps there's an option or application on the NAS itself that can do so.

[Demon Cleaner]

Today they finally picked up the receiver and the beamer, hopefully it's not taking too long (which honestly I doubt ).

[Harrison]

Are they being repaired locally? Or sent back to the manufacturer to be tested? If they are going back to the manufacturer it could take months before you get a repaired or replaced return.

The bad thing is that normally the manufacturers will give you a refurbished item as a warranty replacement, rather than another brand new item. This happened with me when I had to do a warranty return for my HP B9180 professional A3+ printer. HP were very good, sending the replacement printer before I had to return the faulty one, so that the packaging from the replacement could be used to return the faulty one. They even paid all the shipping costs and pre-arranged the courier collections. The annoying thing was that my new printer was manufactured in 2011 when i purchased it, but the replacement I received was a refurbished one made in 2007! It had however worked perfectly to date so I can't really complain. It is just annoying to know you have purchased something nice and new and ended up with something years old.

[Demon Cleaner]

They are sent back to the manufacturer.

But don't they just repair them then? I didn't get any replacement. And honestly, I don't want older stuff. Although they are quite new in their range, both of them.