Recently our 8300 has developed a problem in that it crashes & reboots if it is recording two scheduled programs and then we try to playback a previously recorded program. We used to be able to do this with no trouble but now it is a repeatable problem. Has the software changed? Anyone else have this problem?

Null

It should work, although I always try to avoid "pushing" the unit that hard by using timeshift channels, recordings on repeated programming (Discovery, PBS, etc).

Sometimes it can't be avoided, so check your signal strength and S/N ratio. Sometimes if the signal isn't great, the more you push the unit, the more likely you will encounter a problem. Do a cold reboot too:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17719

I was having the same problem and it went away for a few weeks and just recently started happening again??

There are others on this forum with a similar problem but I have not seen any resolutions.

I would be interested to know if others had it recently start happening again?

You have to call in with all of the channels being recorded/watched. They can then reboot something channel related at their end and all will be good again but if you can't provide the channels they don't know what to reboot.

What exactly do I tell them needs to be done so that they dont try and say its the hard drive or the phase of the moon or whatever else they try to pull out of their $#@?

Tell them to open a ticket with the channel info. The group who look at the tickets will know what to do.

I too have had a similar experience to dgeorge. For a while now my PVRs (I have 2 of them) have started freezing, followed by a reboot when they are simply recording one show and then I start another saved show at the same time. It started, went away for a couple of weeks, but now it's started happening again. I first thought it was a problem with the one PVR but now both are doing the same thing...there's definitely something going on.

Have you checked your signal strength recently? The symptoms are typical of poor signal strength. See here for instructions:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17719

I can confirm similar problems that seem to have started today (although I haven't tried it in the last 2 or 3 days). I never had problems with any combination of recordings/watching, but today, while a movie was recording, every time I would try to watch something recorded, the 8300 would just crash. No response whatsoever. I had to unplug to get it responsive again. After a few tries with different recorded programs, I cancelled the recording and I could watch those programs that made it crash before. Seems to me like a botched firmware upgrade...

Edit: For what it's worth, I checked and the recording that was causing problems was on channel 329 (Peachtree TV), a channel I record from on a very regular basis without any problems before.

Well, I called Rogers and had them look into it. Not sure if they fixed anything. I came up with my own fix.

I figured out that it would happen if I was recording something on channel 3 or 8 so I simply changed any recordings on those channels to other channels showing the same show.

Problem solved!

So for those getting nowhere with Rogers, I suggest you try and see if certain channels cause the issue and see if you can record those shows on another channel.

Hope this helps

Why would you record 3 or 8 instead of 515, 517? Or do you have the SD PVR? The Ch 8 issue is known, see the following thread:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17213

Yep, mine is SD.