PVR Repair service?

[Pilaar39]

I own a Rogers Cisco 8642HD PVR that is out of warranty and not working properly.

Rogers will not service it, nor recommend any service depot.

Is there anyone in the Scarborough (or GTA) area that services this product?

***Edited labels***

[Gdkitty]

I dont live in that area myself, so cant help with a location

But what is exactly wrong with it? (or beleived to be wrong with it).

If its just hard drive.. i can pass along instructions on how yourself (if you are knoledgable enough) or someone else with even some computer repair experience, could do for you.

[Pilaar39]

Thanks for the reply.. I think I found someone locally that can fix it.

I dont think it is the HD.. I formatted and reinitialized the HD, and it still fails.

The symptoms are that it freezes when trying to playback any recording, when trying to view the guide, and mostly any function other than watching live TV.  And even when watching live, I cannot pause.

Moral: don't BUY a pvr!

[sob]

Hi

  How do reformat the drive?  Did u physically remove it from the box or is there a menu option to reformat?

[Meowmix]

Hello sob

You can go into Settings - Troublshoot - Factory reset ( It may be called something else depending on the box & IPG you have. That will reformat the whole entire box & earase the HHD of all recordings. 

[Pilaar39]

To reset and format the HD in a Rogers Cisco 8642HD

Press and hold the pause button on the remote
Wait for the little mail envelope icon to show on the PVR
Press Page Down on the remote
Press List on the remote 3 times

[GLORIALLCHEUNG]

Hi Paul,
Do you still have the contact info (phone # and address) for the Rogers Cisco PRV 8642 HD repair? I need some one who can try to fix it for me. It's not your type of problem.
Many thanks,
Gloria

[Sprucetree18]

Trying to rescue my Cisco 8642 HD PVR

Hello... I have an HD Nextbox PVR (Cisco Explorer 8642) which recently began constantly pixelating and sputtering across all channels, despite rebooting it multiple times.  I took it in to a Rogers store to exchange it, where I was informed that I actually owned it (I thought I was renting it, but apparently I've owned it for more than a year now, from a previous - now-defunct - rent-to-own program of Rogers).  So, I got a new PVR (rental) while I was there.  Rogers does not fix PVRs, and neither does anyone else in town (I'm in Ottawa).  I decided that, rather than just throwing out this PVR I own, I would try to figure out how to fix it myself.  Based on everything I was reading on the internet, I thought that the most likely culprit was that the hard drive needed to be replaced.  I watched a YouTube video on how to do that, and it seemed pretty straightforward, so I did this.  When I rebooted the PVR with the new hard drive installed, it went through a reinitialization process for quite some time, but then came back to life in the usual manner.  The pixelating and sputtering was now fixed; however, I now had a "you're not authorized to view this channel" message on several channels that I am supposed to get.  I next called Rogers to see if there was anything from their end they could push, and despite my telling them this was likely an issue with this PVR, they sent a technician (at no charge) to see if there was a signal strength issue in the house (there wasn't).  The technician also came to the conclusion there was still something wrong with the PVR, but nothing he could do.  All the channels that I did get worked flawlessly, but half or more of my channels were missing (also, the on-demand function was not working, though recording features remained intact).  Subsequent to this, I now suddenly have this "not authorized" message on ALL channels, so the PVR has essentially been rendered useless.  (This PVR IS showing as authorized on my account btw, that's been checked and double-checked and re-authorized by Rogers for good measure, to no avail).   Anyways, so much for my $70 new hard drive investment (!).  My question is this:  do I now throw this PVR away, or is there some other way to rescue it?  I feel like this machine could still work, except that it has some kind of a software bug, but I don't know how to fix it, and I am open to any suggestions for a (free) fix...

[57]

This may still be an authorization issue. You may wish to call Rogers back and have them try to reauthorized the box again, but firmly and calmly ask for "second level" to have a look at it. This happens a lot with owned boxes because the first level CSRs, and most of the technicians, only know how to swap out boxes and barely know how to read signal properly.  It could also have to do with signal in your home or neighbourhood, even if other boxes in your home are working because some seem to require a bit more signal.  Here's a thread on the signal issues.

http://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/forums/forumtopicpage/board-id/PVR_settop_boxes_remotes/message...

The fact that you mentioned that the box could not get On-Demand indicates to me that there is an issue with the return signal to the Rogers head end, which is usually something upstream blocking that return signal (like a bad splitter, etc).  It's possible that the issue is inside the box, but that is actually quite rare.

[Sprucetree18]

Oh. Mah. God.  You were totally right.  Despite several previous calls wherein I *thought* they had reauthorized the box for me, (based on the unit model # listed on my account), this time I pulled the serial number off the back of the unit and had them look it up specifically, and lo and behold, they did not have it authorized properly... the other thing I learned was that I probably never needed to replace the stupid hard drive in the first place, a factory reset would likely have cured the pixelation and sputtering issues... Too bad none of the previous tech support I talked to, including the technician who came to my house, and the people at the Rogers store, never told me this solution (though I guess because they are no longer making money off this unit I own, there's not much motivation to fix it?). It just goes to show how persistent/proactive you have to be with Rogers to get a solution... oh well, at least I replaced the hard drive with a bigger one (1 TB instead of  500 GB)...

Thanks for your help 57, much appreciated!