Well my first foray into the world of HD PVRs was a short one. I had my 8300HD up and running for less than 24 hours before the HDD completely crashed. Thank goodness it's a rental. Here's hoping the next unit lasts a little longer.

I realise that these things happen but I'm a little miffed because I was really looking forward to watching the latest episode of Heroes in HD. Now I just have to hope that one of the local cable centres has an 8300HD in stock.

How did you determine the hard drive crashed? What were you doing just prior to the crash?

I was watching some recorded content which began stuttering. Soft powered-off the box and let is sit idle for 10 mins before powering back on. Playback still stuttered. So I rebooted the box (hard reset). At that point, all recorded content was gone and the PVR reported that the disk was 100% full. Waited for a while figuring that the set-top might have been reformatting the drive. Next time I pressed 'List' I got an 'Unrecoverable Disk Error' message.

Viewing the OSD screens showed all of the partition sizes on the HDD to be 0 and the PVR functions disabled.

If you can boot the box, see the Digital Home FAQ (under help) "Tips for SA STBs". As a last resort it's possible to reformat the drive as instructed there.

Before you do that though, try a few more hard reboots (unplug, wait a few seconds/replug, wait a few minutes). Sometimes it takes 2-4 reboots to restore functionality.

If you can boot the box, see the Digital Home FAQ (under help) "Tips for SA STBs". As a last resort it's possible to reformat the drive as instructed there.

Before you do that though, try a few more hard reboots (unplug, wait a few seconds/replug, wait a few minutes). Sometimes it takes 2-4 reboots to restore functionality.

Thanks for the recommendations, 57. At this point, I've already exchanged the box for a new one but I'll be more persistent in my testing next time. FWIW, the guy who runs our SA cable headend here in our lab agreed that the box was probably dead (I can't be as sure as I'm more of a Motorola guy when it comes to headends and set-top knowledge).

Box number 2 has made it past the 24-hour mark and is still functional so that's a bonus! ;)

I am on my 2nd and soon to be 3rd box. Unit was working fine for ~ 2 months. This time I unplugged the box to loosen it in order to access the back in/output ports, when I plugged it back in, the unit rebooted (as expected) but then just gave a blank screen when trying to turn it on after waiting the requisite 5-10 minutes for booting up.

I found that I was only able to see channel 998 (which is a blank screen). Tried rebooting the machine several times, I tried to make sure that it wasn't a setup problem, pressed "Guide" and "Info" buttons at the same time on the unit and was able to set up, but once again, only blank channel 998 was viewable and the following message was displayed after pressing "Info": "Advanced services are temporarily unavailable"

I tried the suggested method for formatting the hard drive (hold pause for 3 secs until mail icon lights up, release pause, press page down, press LIST key 3X then turn box off and then on and again and unit should re-format).
Didn't seem to work though - is there supposed to be some kind of signal that the thing is re-formating? How long should it take?

This is my worst consumer electronics experience to date. I understand that Rogers may be offering TiVo products here soon though?

This is my worst consumer electronics experience to date. I understand that Rogers may be offering TiVo products here soon though?
Plz elaborate on Rogers tivo?

It was a question, to which the answer is - probably not for a while. Comcast in the US is testing TiVo firmware in select areas. Don't get your hopes up for quite a while...

The TiVo client does not quite run on SA equipment yet. I have seen an early build of it running on an SA8300HD but it wasn't anywhere near ready for prime time yet. So the likelyhood of Rogers deploying a TiVo client in the near future is practically zero.