Official New 8642 PVR from Rogers

[wingfan]

i'm getting my HD PVR and HD boxes (cisco ones) tomorrow.. hopefully it works in Ontario was told it does from rep, multi room PVR. i'll post back if it does/doesn't.

[MooBaloo]

I have both. They don't do it as far as I can tell. I even tried connecting them both on my network to see if they would "find each other" but I had no success.

[wingfan]

damn not what i wanna hear.. have you called, any ideas when Ontario will get this working?

[alebowgm]

The Cisco 8462HD does NOT have multi room PVR at this time. The box is capable of doing so, but the feature is not turned on. Rogers continues to sell customers on the fact that the unit has the feature and when pressed about it CSRs have been told to tell customers the feature will be available in the near future, likely before the end of the year... so I'd take it with a grain of salt...

[aereolis]

Current plan is for a few months, they are just working out a few bugs. The whole home pvr service works in its current iteration on a development server. The new guide (supposedly launched 23rd) is also very pretty and in HD, I imagine a lot of people will also be very happy with that too!

[morkys]

Hey folks. I have an 8642HD rental at the moment, but all this talk about losing my internal and/or ext HDD recordings if I change pvr boxes (like if I want to buy a PVR after the two year rental)...has me wondering if it's worth it to just buy one now. I see a fair number of used 8642HD pvr boxes for sale on the web.

If I am in the market to buy an 8642HD, is there anything about the units I need to pay attention to aside from the obvious, like condition etc? Do I need to be aware of different versions of the 8642HD or are they all the same at this point?

I was thinking of posting this question in the owners thread, since those people know the most about them, but I don't own one.

thanks

[57]

See the following thread on selling/buying - you must purchase from a Rogers customer or previous Rogers customer in good standing (bills paid). You cannot use an "outside" STB on Rogers.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=64632

I believe the only differences between the various 8642s are the HDD size and if you purchase I would recommend you read the 8642 iHDD upgrade thread - that way you can have a 1TB iHDD and not worry about the eHDD aspects at all.

[57]

Several posts discussing pricing have been moved to the Rogers Pricing Sticky.

[urbanlegend]

I have the 8642 with the new firmware and I wonder if there are options to handle how SD resolutions travel to my tv over HDMI.

With my old 8300HD, it would push HD or SD signals over HDMI and my tv would know to display HD as FULL and SD in a stretch mode. With the 8642, HD works fine, but SD is pushed at 1080i and so it sits in the middle of my tv screen.

Since I don't think the wizard works the way it used to, I don't know how to get the new box to behave the way my old box worked.

Please let me know how to set the options so I can get HD and SD resolutions to push natively through HDMI.

Thanks,

J

[57]

As discussed in the new firmware thread, this is no longer possible with the new firmware. You only get one output format that you cannot "override". Check out the new firmware thread.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=150889

[bbtfastback]

Good day. I had an old 120G HD-PVR that served me extremely well for 5+ years. Someone had told me that I could go in to Rogers and switch my 120 for a 320. Thinking everything was going to perform the same, I did the switch, but since I purchased my 120, they gave me a refurbished 320G HD-PVR, through a local Rogers Plus store.

I am now on my 2nd HD-PVR and the two I have received seem to have hard drive problems when playing back a recorded show (returned the first one too because of this problem.)

Really frustrated here...what else can I do? Continue to return them until I get one that works??

[alebowgm]

I am assuming this is a rental unit. Otherwise I'd want to have additional details on how a purchased 8300HD was exchanged for an 8642HD.

As with all rentals, they are refurbished units when you do an exchange. They never will take a new one off the shelf outside of the first batch that come to the stores when the 8642HD were released, and those were very limited in numbers. In fact, if you remember at first, many stores were not allowing 8300HD exchanges for 8642HD units as they were only for special circumstance exchanges until referbs started to roll in. I would note to you that there are recent reports of some 500GB rental units floating around at stores instead of 320GB units, so if you do wind up going back to the Rogers store, it may be worth calling ahead or calling around and finding a store that has one with that size drive. There is also a smaller 160GB unit and you probably want to try and avoid that.

One thing to be cognizant of is that many at DHC have found the 8642HD to have a more sensitive tuner than the 8300HD. Check your signal strength. Something that may had marginally been enough before for the second tuner (which from my experience often registers lower signal levels) may not be now and that may be the cause of your problems (since the second tuner is what is often used for recordings).

Otherwise, yep, keep going back to the store until you get a unit that you are satisfied with having a good working hard drive, but I would be surprised if that was the real problem since they are often tested before being put back out into circulation. The only other thing to do would be do to a hard drive mod as outlined on the site, but since this is a rental unit, you can run into warranty problems and such. Granted, going this route (that is, installing a new SATA drive from scratch) would also confirm if its the hard drive, signal, or in rare circumstances the unit causing problem.

[bbtfastback]

thanks for the response....some questions below:
1) how can i check my signal strength? what am i looking for?
2) if signal strength is a problem with the 320, what's my next move?

...and also to answer your question. It was a rogers store rep who told me i could bring in my purchased (previously rented) 160g and exchange for a refurbished 320g.

[alebowgm]

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

You may also be able to enter the screen (outside of the method listed on the FAQ) by holding the pause button on the remote for 10+ secs until the envelope appears and then pressing Page +. Not sure if the new firmware has this ability but I know the old one does and you didn't list if your on the old SARA or the new SARA.

If it is signal, you can either call Rogers and they will dispatch someone to fix the signal. This may mean installing a booster, running new lines, checking for leakage, etc. Depending on the situation, Rogers may also charge a nominal fee for the dispatch, although they have been known to waive it/reverse the charge on occasion or charge nothing at all. Or if you don't want Rogers in your house/prefer the DIY method, you can go out and get your own boosters, splitters, etc.

If you do decide to have Rogers come out, it may be worth having them install the filters for the WHPVR while they are on site.

[bbtfastback]

Getting a new box tonight (Attempt #3). If this attempt doesn't work and I have the same problems, I'll check the signal strength, and proceed with your suggestion.

actually, make make sense to check signal stregth first with box #2 before returning.

will update for sure! thanks!