Sentinel 4ch died - Alternatives/Repair/Fix?

I have a Maplin Sentinel 4ch DVR that has been great for the last 18 months. It was my first DVR and I have become used to the features it has. It has died and the network light and hard drive light wont come on and there is no image from the composite or vga ports. I have tried an alternative hard drive, removing power and backup battery for 24 hrs but still no joy. I tried looking for a firmware in the hope that I could reflash it but I cant find any firmware at all. Any ideas?

Alternatively I have been looking at a replacement DVR. Looking at them it appears I was a bit spoiled by the Sentinel DVR. In that I do use mobile over the internet so an internet quality of CIF is great as long as it can record all channels in D1. I used in in motion record with a 3 second before the trigger and 3 sec after. I like to use the CMS to configure the DVR and review footage so one with CMS would be good.

It would be great if I could get a new DVR with the same features, it would be great if I could view recordings remotely via and android phone but that is a nice to have.

Can anyone suggest a cheap DVR 4ch or 8ch that has the above features or any ideas on how to get the Sentinel back up and running.

Thanks for any help.

no lights coming on, no hard drive activity and no type of signal on VGA out/bnc out-to-monitor, in other words the stand alone dvr looking completely dead seems sign to me that you have a failed power adapter. Check your DVR's power adapter with a volt meter against the power adapter's power specification (Most likely is a 12 Volts DC at 2 to 5 Amps power adapter), if the voltage reads OK on the volt meter that is still no guarantee that the power adapter is 100% OK, the volt meter will read out voltages, but it wont perform a stress test to test the power adapgter under a load (amperage test), there would be a possibility that the power adapter reads out 11.25~13.25 Volts DC but as soon as you plug any load voltages drops to zero. A good way to perform a load test is to connect a 12 volts 25W automotive incandescent light bulb and see if the light bulb lights up, or if you have an LCD computer monitor that requires a 12 Volts DC at ~2 Amps, plug in the power adapter to see if it will power up the LCD screen, or any other load you decide to use.

If you are convinced that the problem is the power adapter, then you can find another 12 volts DC power adapter of around the same amperage rating or greater than the original (about 3 amps or more) and see if your DVR powers up.

Disclaimer: I am using 12 volts DC as an example only, this does not guarantee that your DVR's power adapter IS rated at 12 Volts, always check your power adapter's label to see its rated voltage and amperage. your substitute power adapter MUST match the original power adapter's voltage and the amperage rating must be at MINIMUM the same as the original but it can be greater (remember, the VOLTAGE HAS to be the same, its just the amperage that can be greater or equal than the orignal). Example: 12V DC 3A = 12 Volts DC (Not AC!!) at 3 Amperage.

I have serviced different types of Stand Alone DVR's and the ones that seems that they had died completely (no power-on sign of any kind) in reality the power adapter of the DVR was at fault, once I replaced the power adapter with MATCHING DC voltage with a little bit higher amperage rating so that it can last much longer the DVR started working again. Example: The original power adapter said it was a 12 Volts DC at 3.5 Amps and that power adapter was damaged, I got a replacement 12 Volts DC power adapter rated at 4.5 Amps so that the power adapter doesn't have to work forcefully if the DVR happens to be consuming anything near 3 to 3.5 Amps of current. I always make it a point in getting a power adapter rated at a higher amperage so that this kind of power adapter failure doesn't repeat itself in the future.