Eachine ProDVR Black Screen Problems

In my last videos, screen flicker has been a bit of an issue. You can check out what I mean in those videos here, and here.

The issue is simply; during playback of a video, when the signal from the video transmitter is weaker, the screen goes partially or wholly black.

The problem, however, is not due to the transmitter or the receiver; but the Eachine ProDVR itself. The signal that I get on my goggles (Quanum v1) is just snowy here and there, perhaps a slight amount of distortion occasionally - but never any black. The goggles don't even go to black when there is no signal at all - they just display good old fashioned snow.

The DVR on the other hand is bloody awful. Here are some selected sample images for your referencing pleasure:

I thought this was just an artefact of signal fade and had ordered a couple of 200mw VTx units for my QX95 - more power can fix any problem, right? But while viewing some of the videos that Mark made while we were flying together during the session above I found that his recordings looked the same as what I was seeing through my goggles (although his screen blacks out like my DVR does - go figure! something to fix another day...).

Armed with this knowledge I decided to go on a bit of a hunt around the internet for some reasons and solutions, and after not much searching at all I came across this awesome little vid from Quadcopter Patrol which explains the problem perfectly.

This completely and neatly sums it up for me - the hardware that I have is the blue 1.6 board and a quick chat with my flying buddy confirms that he received the 1.4 version when he ordered. At the time of writing this there is no firmware upgrade that updates the decoder chipset, and while I am tempted to see if I can write a firmware update for the ProDVR, that might have to wait until I am really, really bored.

As for where to from here - I'll have  a chat to Banggood customer support and see what they have to say, and if that doesn't amount to anything there is always the HMDVR that is recommended in this video.

Actually I might just order the HMDVR before I talk to them to save time...

Hope this helps, thanks again to Quadcopter Patrol for the nice concise explanation of the problem - you saved me a lot of research!

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Tuesday, 6 December 2016 Eachine ProDVR , FPV , Quanum v1 Goggles , QX95 , Video