Thomson Sky HD Box (DSI8215)
Power Supply Unit and Hard Drive upgrade
Last updated: 27 March 2010
Think you've got a tuner problem?
Not locking on one signal?
Loss of some channels?
Juddering picture?
Blocking/Digitising?
Failed recordings?
Switching into standby?
Fans on continuously?
Stuck in standby?
The original Sky HD boxes, manufactured by Thomson (model number DSI8215 or 902020 or with serial numbers beginning 4E300) are notorious for developing problems between 12 and 36 months old. This is usually due to capacitors dying on the power supply unit (PSU). Either the combination of increased processing power and a larger hard drive allegedly appears to have caught Thomson out or most people are stacking their equipment without proper space for ventilation (see the numerous forums on this subject). Some boxes never experience any problems, but often the first signs are that the box will tell you that there is a problem with one of the input signals, followed by some channels missing then freezing, no picture at all, switching into standby not coming out of standby or even not coming on at all. If the box is still under its 12 month warranty, Sky will simply come out and replace it altogether, but if it's outside its warranty, then Sky typically charge £65 for a call-out and will give you a refurbished box with a 3-month warranty [these have terrible track records] or will charge something in the region of £200 for a new one.
Gladly, there is a solution which is far more cost effective:
Satcure have developed a replacement set of capacitors with Digifix. You have three choices here:
1. Take out the PSU and send it to them for replacement.
2. Ask a local/national repairer to fix it for you - MY OWN REPAIR SERVICE IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE. (Click Here).
3. Order a capacitor kit and do it yourself. (You need soldering skills for this one).
I am a local repairer and can do this for a small fee, but many people could do it themselves, so I've put together this page to show how it can be done. You will need the following tools:
25watt Soldering Iron
Soldering Pump
Snips
Long-nosed Pliers
Philips Screwdriver
Flat Blade Screwdriver
Pronged 'grabber'
Craft Knife
Solder
Soldering Braid
Can of Pressurised Air (not essential)
Can WD-40 (useful)
Baby Oil (ooh-eer)
Of course, you'll also need Relkit33j or Relkit33js from Satcure
PSU UPGRADE
UNPLUG THE UNIT FIRST AND LEAVE IT FOR AT LEAST AN HOUR...
so that the capacitors discharge. If you don't do this and accidently touch
the PCB terminals (even when unplugged), you will be thrown across the room.
[I will not be held responsible for your death] Undo the centre top screw
on the backplate.
Using the flat-blade screwdriver, carefully lift the catches underneath one-by-one, whilst gently prising the black cover away from the metal boxing. Note that you don't need to undo or loosen the six screws holding the black casing together. If you do, you might find it easier, but it's then more difficult to put back together afterwards.
Slide the black casing about 1.5cm away from the metal casing. Gently pull the sides outwards and lift the metal box away.
Move the plastic cover away from you so that you don't sit on it, and carefully turn the metal case over. Note that one of the front panel PCBs (with the lights on) is raised on legs. Be careful not to nudge this as the lights won't be aligned when the cover goes back on.
Remove the two silver screws holding the top buttons PCB in place and gently
lift the end furthest away from you, towards you. You will be lifting the
top cover next,
so this PCB needs to be out of the way.
Undo the three black screws on the left-hand side where the fan is and lift up the cover.
Inside should look like this... The PSU is the left-hand PCB - yes, the one with the fan in the way.
The main molex connector has a little hook on each end and they can become brittle and snap easily, so either prise out the catch with a screwdriver and pull gently upwards, or warm up the plastic with a hairdryer, then spray a little WD-40 on the plastic to loosen it and remove the cable.
Then the fan can be removed by hand. Simply pull it slowly to the right and the rubber plugs will stretch and pop through. TOP TIP: Don't remove the rubber pins from the metal casingg.
With the fan removed, you will see a black screw in each corner of the PCB. Remove all four screws.
...and the one holding the power socket in place with the back panel.
Then the PCB can be removed.
Here you can actually see the culprits. In this example, there are four 'domed' or 'bulging' capacitors, with three of them showing signs of leakage.
Here's a normal one on the left and a bulging one on the right to see a comparison
If your box was dead with no red light on the front, chances are, the resistor with the tail coming out the top (R15) would have blown. This one is ok..
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However, this one is blown and your Relkit33j will not be enough. You also need Satkit33j, which is a little harder to fit and is also quite expensive.
Another sign of more damage than a Relkit33j will fix is D21 might have blown. This one is ok...
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Whereas this one has flashed and died.
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This is the area underneath a failed C14 capacitor (the big one). This PSU is toast, literally, and is completely unrepairable. It's a wonder the unit didn't catch fire. Amazingly, the fuse was OK, although the glass was broken!!!
So assuming you have the right kit(s), then you need to desolder each of the solder joints of all the capacitors and remove them. Not some, but all. Just because they are not bulging, it doesn't mean they are ok. It's better to replace the lot if you've come this far.
If you need to, tidy up the hole with some solder braid.
So they start to look something like this...
After you've removed them all, you will notice that the board is marked with a cross-hashed side under each capacitor - this is the negative and where the SHORT leg of each new capacitor goes. Before you start, gently and carefully, cut and scrape away the remaining white glue from where the old capacitors were.
When you put the new ones in, you should deliberately leave long legs on C21 so you can bend it away from the heatsink. Make sure the legs are not touching.
When you've replaced all the capacitors, do a visual check to make sure all the joints are ok and also that they have been placed in the right way (negative to the cross-hashed area).
Before replacing the PSU, put a small star washer over the metal mount for the top left screw. This is a ground, so needs to be a good connection. a bad connection here can sometimes show the same symptoms as before. Use a little blu-tac to hold it there if you don't have steady hands!
BEFORE YOU REPLACE THE PSU...
Put the wire connector onto the PSU first. If you don't do this, you may bend
and damage the PCB permanently. If you've got big sausage fingers like me,
this yellow tool is great. It grabs the screw head and helps you place it
in the right place.
Now here's the fun bit. Dap a tiny bit of Baby Oil on your fingers and lubricate the rubber fan mounts.
Then push the rubber pins through the mounting holes in the fan with some long-nosed pliers. You cannot order new rubber pins, but plastic bolts are available from Satcure. I wouldn't advise this though as they can be noisy. The rubber dampens the noise well, so try and preserve them.
A good thing to do now would be to back up the hard drive (see below) before putting the cover back on because the final step is to carry out a Full System Reset. A problematic PSU can sometimes cause problems with the software. If you don't care about losing the recordings, then you don't need to worry about this.
That's it. You're done. Putting it back together is a reversal of how it came apart. At this point, it would be a good idea to give the system fan and the drive fan (accessible underneath) a good blast from the pressurised air. This helps to prolong the life of the fans.
Be careful when putting the box back in the plastic casing not to nudge (a) the lights on the front panel and (b) the rubber fan mounts.
Forced Update:
To reflash the software, start with the box unplugged at the wall, but with both satellite feeds plugged in. Press and hold the 'Backup' button on the top of the box and plug the box in at the wall (assuming you can still reach!!). Keep the Backup button pressed and after 10-15 seconds, all the four lights on the front panel will light up and the box will download the latest software from the skies. It takes about 10 minutes and then the box will reboot. This is a bit like re-installing Windows again over a corrupt operating system. Note that this will not reformat the drive, so your existing recordings are safe - although God only knows why you want to keep four X Factors, a repeat of Only Fools and Horses and two Coronation Street episodes...
If you've got this far and the box doesn't spin up the hard drive after a couple of minutes after a system reflash and reboot, and the box still won't come out of standby, then the hard drive has failed - see below.
Assuming all is well, delete any failed recordings and do a Planner Rebuild. After this, it should be ok.
HARD DRIVE UPGRADE
Not always, but sometimes, a failed PSU can cause problems with the Hard Drive and the new EPG appears to be causing problems too (see below). However, the typical life of a hard drive in these machines is about 2-3 years. If you've got the lid off, you might as well do this too. If you're this far and fancy increasing the size of the drive, this is how to do it.
Firstly, undo the Power and SATA cables from the left-hand side of the drive.
...and remove the drive fan wire from the main board on the right-hand side.
Undo the four mounting screws for the caddy and gently lift it out. Unscrew the four drive mounting screws (one is under the warranty sticker) and gently remove the drive. Give the fan in the caddy a good blast of pressurised air to remove the dust.
HD boxes (apart from Amstrad at the moment) only recognise drives up to 1,000GB,
so a 1.5TB drive will not work. Also, anything above 500GB will be reformatted
to 500GB after a Full System Reset (this is not a Forced Update), so be aware
that only half the capacity of a 1TB drive will be available if an FSR is
done.
This one is a Samsung Spinpoint F1 (1GB) drive (a popular choice, but there are better ones now). Anything above 500GB needs to be prepared by some special software before being put into the box. There is a free online download for this. More details are below.
Put the drive in the caddy and put the caddy back in the box, being careful not to pinch the fan wires. Replace all cables and secure with the screws. Then replace the rubbery mat that was on the old drive. The lid keeps it in place.
That's it. You're done. Putting it back together is a reversal of how it came apart. At this point, it would be a good idea to give the system fan and the drive fan (accessible underneath) a good blast from the pressurised air if not done already. This helps to prolong the life of the fans.
The drive in the Thomson boxes is either a Maxtor 6L300S0 or a Western Digital
WD3000JS. Both of them are quite hot when running and typically run at about
42-50 degrees Centigrade when in use. Of course, this kind of heat is not
good inside a small case, hence the two fans. BUT if the bottom of your box
sits on an amp or DVD player, then the heat rising from that will impede the
outflow of hot air from the drive fan underneath. Likewise, the system fan
on the side needs at least 10cm of space to dissipate the heat away. The cooler
you can keep the box running, the better really.
The Maxtor drives need 1.5A to startup (!) and the new EPG caches
to the drive every hour, even when the box is in standby, which puts additional
strain on the drive and PSU, so I would always advise replacing the drive
with a more efficient, low power drive if you are thinking about replacing
the PSU.
My personal preference for a replacement drive is the Samsung F2 EcoGreen.
The drive is perfect for the Sky HD box.
| Maxtor 6L300S0 | Western Digital WD3000JS | Samsung EcoGreen F2 | Comment | |
| Capacity | 300GB | 300GB | 1,000GB | 1,000GB is the max capacity the HD box can currently handle |
| Available Space | 160GB | 160GB | 860GB | 140GB is reserved for Anytime (whether enabled or not) |
| Connection | SATA-150 | SATA-300 | SATA-300 | SATA-150 is what the HD box reads at, so higher is irrelevant |
| Buffer | 16MB | 8MB | 32MB | Very important |
| Seek time | 9ms | 8.9ms | 8.9ms | Very important |
| Spindle | 7,200RPM | 7,200RPM | 5,400 | Slower spin speed means quiter. This has no effect on the performance in this box. |
| Latency | 4.17ms | 4.2ms | 4.17ms | Not so relevant as the data is stored in chunks when recording |
| Startup Power | 1,500mA | 900mA | 550mA | Very important - particularly when considering the new EPG requirements |
In my experience, the slower spindle means that the drive runs
about 12-18 degrees cooler than the other originals, which means two things:
1. The system fan and drive fan will not be on all the time. In fact, they
will probably be on less (depending on where you site the box).
2. The life of the box will be prolonged due to the cooler environment and
less strain on the fans.
The performance is indistinguishable from the factory fitted drives, except you get over 5 times the original storage space. This equates to 400 hours of SD recording and 150 hours of HD recording. Or to put it another way, 133 VHS videotapes!
Note that a Full System Reset will cause the drive to be
reformatted to 500GB, so don't do it if you can help it...
Note that transferring programmes or fitting any drive with a capacity over 500Gb will need to be prepared with Copy+. You'll also need at least one USB HDD caddy and a few hours if your drive is nearly full.
If all this seems a bit daunting or you just don't have the time, I can offer an upgrade service for the PSU, the Hard Drive or both. Most can be done in 2-5 days and returned to you. I hold plenty of stock for Satcure kits and usually around 10 drives and guarantee the PSU for 3 years, which is the same as Satcure. Satcure will fix the PSU, but you need to remove it and send it to them. I will accept the whole box, fix the problem and will service it too. I repair and upgrade about 15 of these boxes a week at the moment and have gained some excellent feedback (below).
Given the problems the new EPG is causing with the drives and PSUs we now only use Satcure's Mk2 kit.
| For a high grade PSU repair/upgrade (suitable for higher than 300GB drives) | A | £50 + postage |
| For a high grade PSU repair/upgrade and a Samsung F2 EcoGreen drive upgrade | B | £130 + postage |
| For a high grade PSU repair/upgrade and a Samsung F2 EcoGreen drive upgrade + transfer all recordings from old drive | C | £140 + postage |