Rogers Has Done It Again!

[LF1949]

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! 

***Edited labels***

[Gdkitty]

Thank you for the warning.

and while it wont guarantee that you will have to replace the hard drive, it greatly increases the chance that you will have to.

[jacobean]

Your comments mirror the problems that I have endured for some time with my "Rogers" PVR SA 8300HD. The infernal drive spins up and shuts down every few minutes, when the unit is powered off. Also worth noting I purchased this device and the warranty has expired. So basically who cares, certainly not Rogers.

I spent an interesting time on the phone with a Rogers "Help" assistant  and the conclusion reached,according to him, as he also owns a. 8300HD PVR, is that it is perfectly normal for the hard drive to operate as I described because his unit operates in the same manner. Now, also, he remarked that he was totally unaware of any problems created by this malfunction and most certainly no complaints.

Conclusion, check out the competition and you might even consider avoiding updates by pulling the plug everynight and  be thankful that Rogers is not involved with the "Canada Arm"

[FormerMember]

There are numerous posts on other forums about the issues caused by the latest firmware update.

This is a good summary from one of them.

1. HSUD (HDD spinning up and down) This HSUD causes issues on playback with pauses when the drive spins down. One workaround is to constantly record say an SD channel. (of course this may cause conflicts)

2. List goes to beginning rather than "staying" at selection after erasing a program.

3. When trying to record, the default position for "select" is to "change to this channel" rather than "Record". Workaround is to press record button instead of select or scroll to record selection.

4. There is missing information in the IPG - a few days out. If that is missing when you set the recording, then there may not be any "info" when you look at the recording in the list.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=156392

Another one to have a look at is this.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r27522299-PVR-Drive-Cycling

On their Facebook page, a Rogers rep posted the following:

"We're looking into it. We have no further info to share."  Translation: We messed up again and have no idea what we are going to do.

[doglvr]

  Just got off the phone complaining about the same HSUD issue and the tech person was of NO help.  I was  looking to replace the pvr and/or take it in for servicing. Will call Rogers about this issue.  Is the best plan to unplug the device at night?

[LF1949]

doglvr

What works for me is keeping the PVR powered on and the hard drive going something. I have mine startup on one of the Galaxy music channels, which are very low bandwidth. Since the PVR will go into screen saving mode sometime in the early morning, I set a dummy manual recording of a Galaxy channel from 1:00am to 6:00am daily that gets automatically deleted after 1 day. If you're actually recording during this time, you may have to adjust the time of the dummy recording.

[park]

I noticed my 8300hd was now HSUDing in the last few weeks. Assuming Rogers reads its own blog, ROGERS PLEASE FIX.
Rolling back to the previous software version sounds like a the fastest way to do so.

[park]

BTW also have an 8642, which is getting better, e.g call display finally works after 2+ years, but still has several annoying glitches.
After its nightly 2AM update, often leaves the time display on, very annoying as the machine is in our bedroom.
Rather HSUDing, the hard drive seems to be perhaps defraggiing constantly when off. Annoying as well.
Software gets "lost" quite often, esp if I do more than one thing on the remote or are recording and playing back.
Seems like it can't quite keep up and gets confused.

[Gdkitty]

Not that I have an 8300 anymore, but I did find out some info from a tech today at my house.

After the spin up update, some people found they lost all their recordings. Apparently they tried to push an update out to fix the spin issue, and it was busted and wiped machines.

[park]

Pathetic excuse..  How do we even know if it is true?

ROGERS when is fix going to be ready ?? 

[Gdkitty]

Never said it was an excuse 😛 just saying the info I got from the tech at the house, who would be more privy to inside info.

They obviously stoped that update, and still need to fix the spin up issue.

I was just trying to pass on some info.