My SA8300HD has rebooted four times in the last 48 hours. It happened several times when it was turned off, and once while I was watching a show (last night). I called Tech Support yesterday evening and they advised me to unplug/replug it. Tonight I turned it on and once again it is set to channel 1 so I assume it rebooted again during the day (I would have seen other signs in my house if it was a power outage).

So is my unit starting to fail?

Check your Signal Strength and S/N Ratio as outlined in the following FAQ.

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

Check (or change out) your connections from the demarcation point to the STB.

Thanks. Level is 2-4 dBmV depending on the channel, and snr is 27-28, again depending on the channel.

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/4235/dsc00590gb.th.jpg (http://img25.imageshack.us/i/dsc00590gb.jpg/)

BTW, can't Videotron access the signal strength info when they check my box remotely? The Tech Support rep said that there was not obviously wrong with my unit from their end.

The SS & S/N on the QAM side is fine at 36 dB, however, there's something wrong with the connections or splitters upstream of the STB if they can't see your information...

I plugged the video cable first into my Monster surge guard/power bar, and then to the STB, could that be a problem, even though it never was before this week?

Do not put an RF-coax through a power bar, especially a Mon$ter. If you bypass the bar your problems may go away and Videotron should be able to read the signals since the bar is probably blocking the return signal.

these bar cause more problem than they resolve!

actually, we optimize the signal ourselves, and if there is a problem with the signal and you did nothing (like plugging the calbe in a monster power bar....) we send a tech for free

actually we had a customer who had problem with his signal, and he had such a powerbar

but each time we sent a tech, he bypassed the damn powerbar, masking the problem

last time we called back, we got his wife, and when she explained the way its plugged, now we understood what was the problem

I have had no problems with my STB in many years, and it has been connected to the same power bar, so I would assume that the bar is not the real cause but I will disconnect it anyhow later tonight. I had no problems last night and when I checked the STB this morning, it was still on the last channel viewed. If the problem returns I will call Tech Support.

Thanks for your comments.

ground voltage from tv or some other device might be you;re problem becuase coax cable is grounded .... ground loop etc... check for that

anyway, it seem that we have trouble with some PVR like yours after the last update

you will probably want to cantact the tech support

My mistake, it was not really connect through the power bar, but the problem went away after the 4 reboots so it must have been due to a firmware update. I wish that we could be notified of all updates and like Windows asked if we want to perform and update...

Mine was doing something similar.

Displayed "boot", then something that looks like "- n u -" then boot again, etc.
It would sometime also start counting down numbers (i.e. r321, r320, ...). I have changed absolutely nothing in my setup since forever.

And today it won't even power up - all cables are plugged in but nothing shows up on the display and I cannot hear the disk spin.

I am not going to be happy if it turns out some new firmware bricked my PVR.
I have a tech coming to see the damage today.