# high pitched whistle??



## regdor (Jun 22, 2006)

My Thomson Tivo is about 3.5 years old and in untouched basic form. It just sits and works like a dream, a great piece of kit as all you experts know! I have noticed it is making a high pitch whistle any ideas on why and what to do about it? The whistle is constant , stanby for example makes no difference and can be heard from 3/4 metres away No other problems apart from that. 
tried to search the forums but found nothing.


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## bigwold (Jun 4, 2003)

The original Quantum drives can produce a very noisy whine as they get older. Time to consider upgrading perhaps?


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## Nebulous (Nov 28, 2005)

Try covering up the fan vent momentarily. If the pitch changes it could be the bearings in the cooling fan. PSU's can sometimes make strange sounds too. Sadly, the most likely (and most costly) fault is the hard disk drive


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

The original Quantum drives (which don't have fluid bearings) can get very noisy indeed as the bearings wear - and it is exactly the high pitched screeching you describe. 

Any modern drive will be significantly quieter, but if you want something virtually silent go for a Samsung HA250JC.


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## ndunlavey (Jun 4, 2002)

Does this only happen when it's recording "One Man And His Dog"?


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## bigwold (Jun 4, 2003)

ndunlavey said:


> Does this only happen when it's recording "One Man And His Dog"?


Don't think that's the problem as regdor said 'the whistle is constant'.


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## regdor (Jun 22, 2006)

Thanks for inputs. I dip in and out of the forum from time to time and it is amazing what you folks do with the tivo. I have always used it as a super video recorder and find the disc capacity ok for my needs as i use medium quality all the time. 
With a bigger disc i would record at best quality and get the crisper picture so if it needs a new drive i would not mind too much. 
I do not want to get into the techie stuff too much so having read what various people offer i would buy a ready built drive and do a straight swap. I could dump the old drive no problem.
I do not mind having a go as i spent 30 years in IT .However i also know how long it takes to get up to speed in any system such as linux and how much time it can take to do a 5 minute job!!!! So i do not mind spending a bit more.

The tivo was such a great product and i find it interesting how it as become so popular in the states that it crops up as a verb in some TV shows. The last one in HOUSE last week when Wilson says to House "did you Tivo the L word" (whatever that may be in american tvland).
I set up a PVR (digifusion i think) for my father in law and whilst it is clever and well priced there are no season passes and that is the biggest single USEFUL thing a pvr needs.
Pity we have lost sky radio and i hope sky do not go to 4 digit station numbers as we are then stuffed i assume. 
Finally if i put in a new pre-loaded drive how does it know i have a lifetime pass
for epgs??
Anyway this is a good forum and worth following even if some of the stuff you do is way over my head! 
For example i had the horrid double click on my remote and as someone advised pulled it apart and gave it a clean and now it works perfectly.


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## tray (Jul 11, 2005)

Swapping the drive for eg the Samsung ( as I have) is really worthwhile. If you get it form one of the regular forum contributors ( who has a website) the installation instructions are excellent the process really is straight forward. 

I also went for the cachecard & SDRAM to improve the response time on Tivo menus etc and I would recommend spending the extra £15 on a new PSU - that's the trickiest bit to fit though. But you don't need to do this

I agree that the Linux, telnet & ftp stuff does look intimidating at first but if you have been doing IT for 30 yrs it's really not much different from DOS, after if you decide to do any of this ( I recommend ENDPAD) you'll only be adding hacks & changing / adding a few lines in some files rather that writing the code itself. 

But the HDD swap will run straight out of the box anyway. I though that £250 ( a drive upgrade only is considerably less) was a lot to spend on an upgrade but I now think it was well worth it. If you ever decide to sell your Tivo it will still fetch a fair amount especially if you have a lifetime sub- bTW don't worry about this as the disk swap does not affect this.


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