So it happened to one of the VU+ Duos in the house. After a clean shutdown it did not boot up as expected but instead just showed the red light. It still blinked on remote keypresses and the harddisk spun up. Nothing else happened with it.

So it was bricked.

Reading the forums about that pointed to a capacitor on the board that quite regularly seems to fail. C807 is it’s name and it’s located near the Harddisk and the power-supply part of the VU+ Duo.

When I looked at the capacitor it did not seem to be faulty or anything. So without the right tools to measure I’ve decided to just give it a shot and replace the original 16V 220uF 85 degrees celsius capacitor with a 105 degrees celsius 16V 330uF one.

In my case I’ve taken out the board, to have a little bit of extra space, and cut of the old capacitor. Desoldering would be nicer looking but, well …

Replacing it on the left-over pins of the old capacitor was a matter of seconds.

After putting the board back in, the VU+ Duo powered up and booted as new. Brilliant!