This ANALOGUE PVR came in with the fault "Not working properly" and displaying fault code U81. The customer wanted it repaired as he has some recordings on the HDD he wants to view and also to be able to play back DVD discs and SD cards.
When powered on, the unit displays "PLEASE WAIT" which is quite normal for these devices, as the OS boots. After some time the display changes to display the error code "U81". Looking in the user and service manuals does not reveal what this code points to. Upon initial internal inspection, there are a couple of capacitors that have blown their tops, so these were noted and the rest checked but there are far too many to do a blanket change, so I ordered the four that had definitely failed in the hope that would fix things.
Sadly not. After replacing the caps, the same error was seen. I checked the power rails and finally ended up looking at IC1508 a 1.8V regulator (MD5001T(, which is connected to two of the failed capacitors. Replacing this restored normal operations.