Technical questions on the procedures below (or any UTV issues) should be asked in the UTV forum on www.avsforums.com. The link to the UTV forum is currently here. (the link will launch a new browser window)
7/15/02 UPDATE (mpardee) - According to a couple threads on the AVSForum it looks as though someone at Microsoft has taken care of the server issue(s) and upgrades are working as they used to again. They are stating that you do not need an MSNtv account as a workaround anymore. I can't confirm nor deny this since both of mine are up and running great, but this is great news. As always, check the forums first before starting your upgrade!
7/14/02 UPDATE (mpardee)- Before you begin the upgrade process, I think it would be worth your time to go over to the UTV forum at AVSForum (link here) and see if others are experiencing success. It looks like somewhere around 8/7 Microsoft must have made some kind of change to their MSN servers that handle the upgrade (when retrieved via modem) and a lot of people have not been able to get the upgrade completed. It is being referred to as the "upgrade loop." There have been a few provided "insider" posts that mention a workaround; you need to already have a MSNtv account for the upgrade to be successful. I can not confirm or deny this, but as of late yesterday it looks as though some people are once again having success at the upgrade. I have no idea if this is something that Microsoft will fix in the future or not since, in all honesty, the only thing they probably broke was people's ability to upgrade. Although I am hosting this info, I am not an expert on the subject (that would be SteinyD and Noobie937). I am a fan of UTV and the hacks that others have been able to figure out that allow all of us to improve this device. Bottom line - do your homework over at the forums! They are the best place for all UTV info.
Hard Drive Upgrade for RCA
UltimateTV Receiver
David Steinman
steinyd@bellatlantic.net
NEW - How to reuse the original UTV hard drive (by noobie937)
The following text outlines the steps necessary to upgrade an RCA Ultimate TV
Receiver to a larger hard drive. To date, the hard drives that are known to work
are Western Digital 100 gig and 120 gig hard drives. Others who have
successfully completed this upgrade have done so with varying drive sizes (80
gig) and speeds (5400 & 7200 RPM).
NOTE: This upgrade assumes you are using a brand new, out of the box hard drive
that has NOT been partitioned or formatted in any way. This upgrade will NOT
work with a partitioned, high level formatted drive.
Successful upgrader Peter Ely adds:
I have used a slower, replaced, 120Gig
drive straight out of my PC (a WD1200BB) and, heeding your warning, I simply did
a format on the drive as the last step before actually removing it from the PC.
It was accepted fine by the UTV unit. So, if your readers wish to use a
previously formatted drive, they should be able to do so if they format it
first. Note - I formatted it with NTFS; I don't know if FAT32 or FAT16 would
have worked. As I'm sure you know NTFS is standard with Windows XP.
Before beginning the upgrade, be sure you have copied any recordings on the
current drive to VHS. Once the drive is removed all existing recordings will be
gone! Instructions for recording to VHS are in the setup and operations guides
provided with the unit.
Be sure you are properly grounded when doing the upgrade. Standing on a wood
floor, touching a large metal object (other than the unit), using a grounding
strap, etc., are all options to ensuring that you do not transmit static
electricity to the unit and causing damage.
NOTE: This upgrade will void your warranty! Though this upgrade is relatively
simple, this should be attempted by someone comfortable inside a computer,
installing components.
The upgrade will take 10-20 minutes depending on your level of expertise.
This upgrade replaced the original drive - a Seagate 'U' Series 5 - 40 Gig drive
with a Western Digital Caviar 120 Gig, 7200 RPM drive. Others who have completed
this upgrade have found other size hard drives in their units and have also
replaced the drive using Western Digital 80 and 100 gig drives.
Step by Step Instructions
1. Remove the access card. This is done by pressing on the access door on the
front of the unit. The door will open. The card is in the left slot.
Remove it and set it aside.
2. To disassemble the PVR, shutdown the unit (power off) and disconnect ALL
cables. Remove 2 screws at the top/back of the unit and lift the cover from the
back, forward. There are two tabs under the front bottom of the case that keep
the cover securely in place.
3. After lifting the cover, there is a short ribbon cable that connects a small
circuit board in the cover with the main system board in the bottom of the case.
Make careful note of the orientation of this cable prior to disconnecting. You
may want to mark one edge with a felt marker to remember which side connects
towards the left. Disconnect this cable from the system board in the bottom of
the case by gently rocking it out of its connector. Set the unit's cover aside.
Complete the upgrade by standing in front of the unit. The hard drive will be
closest to you, shielded by a silver, metal housing.
4. The hard drive is connected by a power cable and a ribbon cable at the rear
of the drive (left side when standing in front of the PVR) and 4 screws in blue
rubberized housing. These 4 screws securely hold the hard drive in place within
the metal housing. Though not necessary, the metal housing can be removed by
removing 3 screws that hold it to the bottom of the case. I did not remove the
metal housing during this process. Using a slight but firm rocking motion,
remove the power cable (cable closest to you at rear of hard drive) and use a
needle nose pliers to remove the ribbon cable. Remove the 4 screws, 2 on each
side which are held in rubberized blue casings. Once these screws are removed,
the hard drive can be slid out of the metal casing towards the left. Set the
drive aside.
5. With the new hard drive in hand, remove the jumper connector that is
connected to pins between the ribbon and power connectors. Once this jumper is
removed, the hard drive will be configured for a standalone (single) or master
drive configuration. This is required by the PVR unit.
4/10/03 UPDATE (mpardee) - make sure to follow the instructions that
came with your new hard drive on how to configure the drive for single or master
settings. The instructions above refer to removing the jumper to configure
the drive for single/master configuration. This was correct for the WD
drive used in this example, but may not be correct for the drive you are using.
Always refer to the drive's instructions on how to set this setting correctly.
Following the included instructions will save you a lot of pain and frustration
later! (thanks to eddieb at the avsforums site for pointing this out)
6. With the power and ribbon connectors facing left, slide the hard drive into
the metal housing. Press down on the power and ribbon cables while inserting the
drive as they will be below the hard drive as you insert it. Note the screw
holes on either side of the hard drive. They will need to be aligned with the
blue rubber standoffs on either side of the drive.
7. Reconnect the power and ribbon cable. Screw in the 4 screws to stabilize the
hard drive. DO NOT overtighten these screws.
8. Take the cover of the unit and hook the front tabs underneath the bottom of
the case. Reconnect the ribbon cable to the system board, again being careful to
reconnect it in the same orientation as it was. The cover should fit snuggly to
the bottom of the case. Reinsert the two screws at the back.
9. Reconnect all cables and reinsert the access card into the LEFT slot. Power
on the unit.
10. The first screen you will notice has a black background and suggests that it
is connecting to WebTV (MSN) to check for updates. After it dials and makes the
connection, the screen changes and the following is reported:
"MSN: Update Needed.
We have developed a free upgrade for your satellite receiver.
To continue using UltimateTV, you must upgrade to the latest version. This
should take less than 74 minutes."
<prompt to press 'go ahead'>
After I selected 'go ahead' (after pressing once using keyboard or remote, this
will take a few seconds), the screen changed again and displayed the following:
"Your satellite receiver is being updated automatically. This will take
about 74 minutes and then you can use MSN TV again.
It then begins counting parts being downloaded up to 206 with a graphical bar
scrolling from left to right. This will take every bit of the 74 minutes
suggested.
11. When the update is complete, the screen will quickly change and then the
WebTV screen saver logo will flash across the screen. Tap any key on the remote
or keyboard to get back to the last screen. The information seen will be:
"MSN: Updating Complete.
The update is complete. Chose 'connect now' if you want to connect to MSN TV.
Press the power button to switch off your satellite receiver.
<connect now> prompt.
Whether you press 'connect now' or not, the unit will be powered off. I
recommend powering the unit off in order to recycle the system and allow the
newly downloaded software to be activated.
Power the unit back on. The system will now walk you through the initial system
setup procedures to configure the type of satellite and number of LNB's
installed.
12. The system will need to download the Guide and update local channel
information (if you subscribe to the local channel package). This could take
several minutes or significantly more time. It is possible that the local
channels will not show up for an hour or more after the guide has been updated
with the 7 days of information the unit will hold.
For non-beta testers and current system software units, the system info will
continue to inform you that it is capable of storing up to 35 hours of recorded
programs. This indication will not change for this software release.
It is possible that the discarded hard drive can be re-used in a PC. Others who
have attempted this have not completed this successfully. It appears that
Microsoft / Seagate have protected the content of these drives so that they
cannot be recognized by the BIOS of PC's or have their partitions removed or
reformatted. However, if you wish to attempt this you will need to be familiar
with hard drive partitions, low level and high level formatting of drives.
TESTING NOTES
After several days of testing, I recorded nearly all movies from the premium
channels of HBO, Showtime and Cinemax. There are 2 or 3 programs mixed in from
non-premium programs. The oldest programs started rolling off at about 79 hours
of recorded shows. This is about 2.6 times the amount of recording space
compared to the factory installed 40 gig drive.
Note to SONY PVR owners: Though these instructions are specific to the
RCA receiver, Sony owners have been successful in upgrading their units with the
same hard drives identified in this set of instructions.
Pictures by mpardee@blindsquirrel.org (they do not do David's excellent write-up justice)
How to reuse the original UTV hard drive in a PC
Information provided by noobie937 over at the AVSForum.com's UTV forum, an excellent source of UTV information...
For this to work, you will
need the following, two utv boxes, and the courage to mess with hot ide
cables...
(note: although noobie937 mentions using 2 UTV receivers to make this work,
others in the forum have shown that it can be done using only 1 UTV receiver as
well. The following steps are still basically the same...)
It is really simple actually. But here are the steps you will need to follow,
I'll post the explanation below as to how I tested and finally got it all to
work. I will call my two receivers sony and rca, just to keep them straight. For
these steps I removed the factory drive from sony and wiped it in the rca.
It all comes down to the way
UTV formats drives. When a drive is installed in a UTV it will check for two
things. The first is if security is turned on, if it is it will try it's user
password, if that works you are good to go. It will then either boot if the OS
is on the disk, or will prompt to go download over the phone line. If security
is turned off it will try to set the master password, set the user password
(individual based on hd and receiver), and then set the security level to
maximum. If it is unable to do these commands (ie maxtor drives) it will tell
you to call UTV. Both sony and rca use the same master password, if security is
turned on and the user password does not match then the receiver sends the erase
prepare command, followed by the erase command, followed by the universal master
password. It will then turn off security, erase the user password, and write all
0's to the disk, and before it shuts off it will reset the master password,
generate a new user password and turn maximum security back on. By removing the
ide cable while it is writing all 0's the receiver is not capable of
re-initializing the security features.
I hope this helps everyone out there. I am glad I found a way to do this without
publishing any passwords or hopefully not giving away any microsoft secrets.
Worse case that I'm hoping for is it will just void your warranties...