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Topic:
Rogers new 8300HD firmware is garbage.
This thread has 5 replies. Displaying all posts.
Post 1 made on Friday November 12, 2010 at 22:17
Daniel Tonks
Wrangler of Remotes
Joined:
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October 1998
28,779
2 of my 3 8300HDs received a major new firmware upgrade yesterday (the 3rd was purchased vs rented). The new firmware redesigns the user interface and adds some minor new features like an improved progress bar, bookmarks, and so forth.

On my primary unit, the first time I tried to rewind live TV it gave me a black screen. It let me change channels, and when I tried to rewind again it mostly locked up on a black screen. So I rebooted it.

All seemed to be going fairly well. I was watching old recorded shows, and new shows were set to be recorded. The messages kept popping up before recordings. However, 10 minutes into yesterday's The Mentalist (12 minutes after the pop-up notice appeared that it would be recording) I tried to play it from the recording list and got only the PVR channel, but no show. Looking at the recording list, it shows as 1 hour, but not highlighted as if it were recording. The EPG also doesn't have the show highlighted, and tuning the channel doesn't show a record dot. Another show recorded at 8PM plays back fine, so I have no idea what happened (or is happening).

Also, I only got 13 minutes of Fringe in the 9PM hour, however WUTV has been causing issues like that (or the infamous split recordings) for about 3 weeks now... so that might not be upgrade related.

I've set Mentalist to record again on the west coast feed. Tonight I checked and... it didn't record it. From reports, I'm assuming it's a problem with my eSATA drive.

I have a Western Digital "My DVR Expander" 500gb. It was sold specifically for use with DVRs such as the 8300HD. And for as long as I've owned it (25 months) it has been flawless.

Tonight, I had scheduled a total of 5 recordings.

7:30 - Wheel of Fortune on CBC - Recorded
8:00 - Medium on CBS - Recorded (I think)
9:00 - CSI NY on CBS - failed at 5 minutes into recording
9:00 - Good Guys Fox - failed at 25 minutes, says "ended early program unavailable" in description
10:00 - Blue Bloods CBS - failed entirely
10:02 - tried to manually start recording Blue Bloods, failed without any error.

At this instant none of my HDD recording functions are working - I can't play *anything* back, live record isn't working at all, but it's still showing me the program list.

I rebooted (2nd time since upgrade) earlier in the evening, before Wheel of Fortune recorded, just to ensure there wouldn't be issues.

At this point Rogers has replaced my ugly but reliable DVR with a pretty but utterly useless one.
Post 2 made on Sunday November 14, 2010 at 17:31
Bruce H.Campbell
Long Time Member
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Posts:
January 2007
339
My bitching with Rogers has to do with the download speeds now that I found a place to catch up
with missed shows....see my rant on WUTV-DT.

I shoulda gone with the higher tier on the mobile modem, was cheap at the time so I only got what is equal to ultralight on cable with the portable modem[the black box that looks like a pie slice on its' end, NOT the rocket] and now anyone who buys it just gets the one level at 45 bucks a month but still faster than I have. So I'm considering the extra 20 bucks a month to unlock this thing to the next level. Should give me, if I do, 700MB in 35 minutes, rather than three and a half hours and the required planning ahead for a sustained d/l in Linux, for some reason a windoze attempt gets cut off or broken which I blame on pings and port scans by those trying to get into my workstation but Ghostwall over reacts by shutting all ports,busting the connection. In Linux the interactive firewall reports on the attacker with a dialogue, giving the option to blacklist or not. It doesn't stop the download.

Now in all the above I wonder what's going to happen to my [email protected] email if I drop them for another ISP. Yahoo once announced that I can get it to follow me as if it were a @yahoo email but now I can't find that notice.

I still think,on telecommunications, that CDNs are getting butt-humped on cost vs. return.

I'd like to help you but I only have OTA but have been studying DVR/PVR over at the AV Science forum, though it has been stated options for CDN cable/sat users appear limited.
Post 3 made on Monday November 15, 2010 at 15:59
FONGW2
Long Time Member
Joined:
Posts:
October 2006
21
Hi Daniel. I have a rented 8300HD PVR from Rogers but I haven't seen the changes that you are talking about. Are they in some special menus somewhere? I haven't noticed anything odd yet with my recordings but that just maybe because they haven't sent the new firmware to my box yet our here in Mississauga.
OP | Post 4 made on Monday November 15, 2010 at 17:21
Daniel Tonks
Wrangler of Remotes
Joined:
Posts:
October 1998
28,779
Oh, you'll notice when they appear. Impossible not to.

I have 3 8300HDs, 2 rentals have taken the upgrade, and a purchased unit has not received it yet. They're supposed to be done near the end of the month.
Post 5 made on Friday November 26, 2010 at 23:14
FONGW2
Long Time Member
Joined:
Posts:
October 2006
21
Yup I just got my upgrade yesterday. So far it's been okay though the PVR did lock up in the middle of watching my recording of House. I had to power the unit off/on and then it looked like it had queued up all of the buttons that I had pressed while it was locked up. Can't say I hate it just yet as I have not lost any recordings yet but that remains to be seen.

I do have to say that I really like the new feature where all of the normal SD stations from 2 to 67 have now been replaced by their HD equivalent. i.e. CFTO on channel 8 is now in HD so I don't have to go to channel 518 to watch it. This was never an issue with me, but my wife and mother-in-law didn't seem to get the concept that you could watch a better picture with no black side bars by going up to the 500+ range of channels. Rogers has idiot proofed it for them so now they can keep watching CITY on 7 (instead of 519) and CFTO on 8 (instead of 518), all in HD. I'm not even sure that they noticed the change but atleast I won't have to cringe when I see them watching a crappy SD signal on an HDTV when there are HD channels available! :)
OP | Post 6 made on Friday November 26, 2010 at 23:25
Daniel Tonks
Wrangler of Remotes
Joined:
Posts:
October 1998
28,779
The HD on low number things isn't really related to the new firmware (they only did that yesterday, while the firmware started appearing a while ago)... all they did is change the virtual mapping from SD to the HD version. Convenient, yes, but really a baby step in the grand scheme of needed features. It doesn't even work with premium HD channels, ie. A&E still maps to SD.

Personally the most useful thing in the new firmware is bookmarks. What I'd really like to see is a widescreen EPG, new episode indication, and better recording management (shows should be able to be stored by show name and then episode name/date, not this massive huge list).


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