 pmd
join:2012-08-08
Manotick, ON | PVR Drive Cycling I thought Rogers had solved the PVR cycling (that whining noise when the hard drive start up and the Click when it shuts down). This morning the PVR which is about 2m from my sleeping head fired up at 5 am and stuck on a "bright" display for some time. I nearly got up and unplugged the d**n thing. Right now it's cycling on/off like it used to do a year ago (which nearly caused me to ditch the thing). My LG standard def recorder NEVER ran unless it had something to record. Why can't the Rogers PVRs figure this out. If there's nothing to record, then shut down and start up when there it. It ain't rocket science. I programmed sh*t like this decades ago.
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Computing 46 years and still get annoyed at tech problems. |
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 avernar
join:2002-05-23
Mississauga, ON | I think there was a firmware update. I noticed it cycling the drive a lot recently as well. |
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Yep, firmware update gone bad again. The monkeys at Rogers can't get it right. Every release comes with a large numbers of obvious bugs that would never make it past any kind of half-decent quality control anywhere else.
With this release, some people (you can read about it at Digital Home) have it happen WHILE they watch recorded shows. So it freezes while the drive shuts down and starts again once it spins right back up. |
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avernar
join:2002-05-23
Mississauga, ON | said by metalhawk:With this release, some people (you can read about it at Digital Home) have it happen WHILE they watch recorded shows. So it freezes while the drive shuts down and starts again once it spins right back up.
I thought it was my external drive going bad causing that. Grrrr.
The most annoying thing is setting up recordings from the guide. They made the Tune To Channel option the default. Why the heck would I want to tune to the channel when I'm hours/days forward in the guide? Morons. |
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Sunfox
join:2003-12-14
Markham, ON | Just like how on the 8462 "Resume Program" is now the SECOND playback option. But here's the thing: if "Resume" was the default and you hit it by accident, you can always hit stop and start back at the beginning. But as it is now with "Play from Start" as the default, if you hit it by accident (as I've often done because the thing is so damn slow and laggy) there is NO way to get back to where you were quickly.
And right now, the playback progress bar is MASSIVE - taking up nearly 1/3rd of the screen. I don't know when this happened, but I'm looking at it right now.
There are so many bad design/behavior changes on the new 8642 interface... and the stupid part is they keep changing. Almost every day something's different, and when they make 1 thing better they break or mess up 2 or 3 other things. |
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pmd
join:2012-08-08
Manotick, ON | The only thing I can do is unplug the PVR when I'm not using it - better than burning it out. When this was happening about a year ago I nearly ditched it. Then one day it stopped.
fyi the firmware upgrade that started this again was Sep. 13, 2012 at 5am
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Computing 46 years and still get annoyed at tech problems. |
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 DustynPremium
join:2003-02-26
Ontario, CAN
kudos:10 | reply to avernar
It is the firmware that's causing the drive to spin up and down all the time right? It doesn't have anything to do with the drive being some kind of PM/APM drive that just selectively powers down due to inactivity? I wish if Rogers could actually get the firmware right I could then just write protect the firmware from being flashed until I decide to unlock it. I either want the damn freaking drive to either just stay on 24/7 or power down when not in use (IE: no scheduled recordings, powered off, no background maintenance)... Why does it have to spin up and down up and down up and down every 3-5 minutes!?? If I knew how to hack into the firmware I'd make the change on my own unit. I want some control over my own hardware.
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Remember that cool hidden "Graffiti Wall" here on BBR? After the name change I became the "owner", so to speak as it became: Dustyn's Wall »[Serious] RIP
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pmd
join:2012-08-08
Manotick, ON | Just had a chat with tech support, who re-initialized the pvr. I could get no answers to the cause of the problem - basically he said it could be anything. Stonewalling usually means they don't want you to know. Hard to believe they don't know after all this time. My old "dumb" hard drive recorder just used my recording times, which only requires a turn-on for the next recording. Rogers pvr uses recording methods (on any channel at any time) that I assume require referencing the live tv guide. Shouldn't require checking every few minutes but who knows. Just as I was sending this, the drive spins up about 2 minutes from last one I heard. Simply not acceptable for a pvr to operate this way. 
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Computing 46 years and still get annoyed at tech problems. |
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Ah yes, the fun never ceases with Rogers!!! I enjoy reading the morning paper and listening to the PVR drive cycling on its rapid road to destruction. Then checking my iPod app to see all the recordings I supposedly have on the PVR, but which I've deleted many times with the app but actually aren't on the PVR when checked.
Rogers - the company that almost get things right!  |
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 elitefx
join:2011-02-14
London, ON
kudos:1 | As long as Rogers continues to buy 3rd rate hardware from 3rd rate suppliers customers will continue to get screwed. You only get what you pay for with hardware and Rogers gets a failing grade across the board.
Rogers isn't saving a dime buying/renting junk because of the extreme tech/maintenence costs associated with their gear. |
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 mozerdLight Will Pierce The DarknessPremium,MVM
join:2004-04-23
Nepean, ON | said by elitefx:As long as Rogers continues to buy 3rd rate hardware from 3rd rate suppliers customers will continue to get screwed. You only get what you pay for with hardware and Rogers gets a failing grade across the board. Are you suggesting that CISCO is a 3rd rate supplier? In some previous thread you claimed that CISCO was a ROCK SOLID --- maybe you need to keep track of your anti-Rogers rants 
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David Mozer
IT-Expert on Call
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elitefx
join:2011-02-14
London, ON
kudos:1 | said by mozerd:maybe you need to keep track of your anti-Rogers rants
you're out of line bud. I don't have to defend my position to you. you need to learn to focus on the actual wording of the post not what's going on in your imagination...... |
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 HiVoltPremium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
kudos:17 | reply to pmd
Does this affect the old 8300HD or just the newer cisco PVR?
I can't say that I've heard my old 8300HD cycling, but i know it got some kind of update earlier this week cuz the channel was 01 when i turned it on. |
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| My 8300HD has been cycling for awhile now. Can't wait until TV season starts up again and I find single episodes chopped up into 5 pieces because it decided to cycle while recording! |
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My 8300 has been cycling all morning and it's driving me nuts. Does anyone know how long this will last? The HD spins up (quite noisily), runs for 20-45 seconds and then spins back down. This seems to happen about every five to eight minutes all morning so far. |
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avernar
join:2002-05-23
Mississauga, ON | reply to Ree
said by Ree:My 8300HD has been cycling for awhile now. Can't wait until TV season starts up again and I find single episodes chopped up into 5 pieces because it decided to cycle while recording!
It does not cycle while recording. That actually a fix for the issue, just record something on the other tuner (a music channel for example as it's low bit rate) and the drive stays spinning all the time. |
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said by Gutch :My 8300 has been cycling all morning and it's driving me nuts. Does anyone know how long this will last? The HD spins up (quite noisily), runs for 20-45 seconds and then spins back down. This seems to happen about every five to eight minutes all morning so far.
In November 2010 Rogers pushed out a firmware update for the SA8300HD PVR that caused the internal hard drive to spin up and shut down every few minutes when the unit was powered off. Any hardware Engineer (I talked to Western Digital at the time) will tell you that this cycling of the drive while reduce its life expectancy. It took Rogers 2 or 3 months to admit they had a problem and 6 months (May 2011) until they updated the firmware to fix the HSUB (Hard drive Spinning Up and Down) issue. Their fix was to keep the drive running 100% of the time even when the PVR was powered off. This technique is also used by other manufacturers such as Motorola.
Last week (September 2012) Rogers pushed out another new firmware reintroducing the HSUD problem again. Anyone with a purchased 8300HD should be aware that this is going to cause your PVRs hard drive to fail requiring a replacement and if its a rental you are going to loss everything that you have recorded.
If you have a 8300HD and are experiencing the HSUD issue I advise you to please call Rogers and report the problem. They will not fix the issue until they get a number of complaints. I hope it doesn't take 6 months this time!
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said by avernar:It does not cycle while recording. That actually a fix for the issue, just record something on the other tuner (a music channel for example as it's low bit rate) and the drive stays spinning all the time.
Ahh, so I wonder what my problem was back then...was really annoying to find 1 minute recorded followed by 1 minute lost followed by 15 minutes recorded followed by 1 minute lost followed by ... etc.
I had to resort to downloading episodes for awhile (which was kind of nice since there were no commercials to skip!) |
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avernar
join:2002-05-23
Mississauga, ON | said by Ree:Ahh, so I wonder what my problem was back then...was really annoying to find 1 minute recorded followed by 1 minute lost followed by 15 minutes recorded followed by 1 minute lost followed by ... etc. That sounds more of a signal loss issue. |
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 StewyPremium
join:2007-12-12
Kitchener, ON | reply to metalhawk
said by metalhawk:With this release, some people (you can read about it at Digital Home) have it happen WHILE they watch recorded shows. So it freezes while the drive shuts down and starts again once it spins right back up.
Yeap confirmed, everytime it cycles it freezes. Knowing rogers it's probably by design to upgrade to cisco and "unfortunately" there's nothing they can do about it. |
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