About 7 years old. Made by Motorola. I can hear the hard drive (or fan?) turning. Front lights up 8888. Nothing else I do makes it any different.
Where is the first place to look. And this is just a matter of education and pride. It is there box, and they will just swap it out, I think.
The first thing I’d try is to call Comcast and speak with their technical support. They could send a refresh signal to your box and that could fix it. Or they could send a technician to check your connections. But if your box is seven years old, it’s probably shot. They will exchange it for a new one and shouldn’t charge you for it.
My gut feeling, too. I had one died. Also, I hope you didn’t have anything recorded on the hard drive for posterity, because it’s gone. Well, it’s probably physically there, but when it happened to me, my provider (Time-Warner) told me they don’t copy recorded content.
There’s no way any frequently-used HD (like the one in a DVR) is still functional after 7 years. They simply do not last that long. Sorry.
Call Comcast, get a replacement.
Out of curiosity, what’s the model number? But my advice is don’t look anywhere - if it’s not working, anything useful you could do to fix it would also void your subscriber agreement about Not Tampering With Equipment, leaving you on the hook for the full replacement value.
7 years is a little long, but they are currently manufacturing HDs for DVRs that are supposed to hit a 5+ year lifetime. But his problem is unlikely to be the hard drive - if it’s not getting past 8888 on the front panel, it’s not getting far enough in the boot cycle for the drive to make a difference.
Sort of figured it was DOA. Didn’t even use it that much. Will probably just return and not replace.
The new stuff from Comcast is really, really good. If you don’t use the DVR that much return it for a newer HD box (without DVR).
I replaced my Comcast DVR after several years and received a new model. The old one could store only twenty hours at HD quality while the new one can store much more. (I don’t even know exactly how much, but if I delete an hour-long show, the available time seems to go up by one or two percent.)
The original Comcast boxes only had one tuner, also, so you couldn’t record two shows at once or record a show on one channel and watch a different show on another channel. The newer boxes will allow you to do that.
Well I mean even if you fix the 8888 error, you’re still using a DVR with a HD which will fail at any second.
I’m sure new ones are much better. When I first started using a DVR, the HD only lasted 2 years before the thing was toast-- this was with Dish Network, I don’t remember the model.
Also, don’t forget: DVR boxes (I assume you mean that and not DVD) constantly record live TV, so it’s running continuously regardless of how often you record programs or watch your recordings.
Do the newer boxes do pass-through (output either 720P or 1080I depending on what the source is without converting it). Comcast tried to talk me into a DVR but they couldn’t give me a straight answer to this question.