Shaw HD

[mark]

Got just regular cable but with a new TV thinking about trying Shaw's HD (no Telus in area and don't want a dish).

Anyone have it and what's it like?

[xtreme]

It seems to be getting better. The audio cuts out less than it used to and they are almost up to 30 channels now.

[Trabby]

i love my Shaw HD, we have a high def PVR, definately worth the extra money. Can pause, record ,do whatever its great

[Phanman]

if your thinking of going this route make sure you get an expandable hard drive that should be out next week. Unless you dont care about the PVR

[mark]

Thinking about the PVR as well since only $5 extra a month.

Though would be getting for the picture, looking on this forum (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=67) at http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/ I'm a little surprised how common the audio dropouts are.

[Phanman]

the pvr shouldnt be anymore money then the HD box

edit: monthly

[Ryan_Lap]

I had shaw hd for a while and had nothing but problems. I then switched to Sasktel high def, which was way worse. ex. freezing during NHL playoffs:mad: I finally switched to Bell HD and havnt had a problem in over a year. Setup was a bit of a pain though.

[mark]

the pvr shouldnt be anymore money then the HD box

edit: monthly

fom Shaw's site, HD is $298 to purchase or $10/mon, the HDPVR $498 or $15/mon.

guess nice thing with Shaw is no contract so could try for a month to see if I could live with it.

[Phanman]

ok... that monthly cost is done through a credit line company (wells fargo) so although shaw doesnt do contracts, the credit line company does (over 1-5yrs). So the PVR that you get is non refundable.

Best way to get cheap PVR's is through visions when they have sales.

They are looking at renting out PVR's in the future but not at this time

[Ryan_Lap]

:2gunfire: Wells Fargo

[Delphinus]

Are customers obligated to use Shaw's PVR if you go HD? I seem to remember hearing that early-gen HD tuners had their IEEE-1394 ports disabled so you couldn't use say your own PVR.

[Ryan_Lap]

I believe you can go HD Receiver or HD PVR Receiver.

[StirCrazy]

I have had shaw HD for about 2 comming on 3 years now.. not a problem ever. I did recently upgrade for the 10 bucks a month for the extra HD channels so now I get them all.

Steve

[bullit67]

Well at least I am not the only one getting the audio drop outs about 1/2 second blips in the audio once in a while it is worse. I recently switched from Bell as the trees on my neighbors property have got too big and they were blocking my Sat signal for my HD dish the standard def dish was ok as long as it didnt rain or get windy. The Picture quality is MUCh better with Shaw I thought my TV was dieing untill I got my new Shaw hook up it is like a new set again. the customer service is by far the best I have ever delt with.

[fishguyxd]

We have the hd pvr box and so far so good you can just get the reciever without the pvr but the pvr works nicly big difference with hd channels but you can still watch other channels (no hd). you can buy the shaw reciever from future or best buy etc.
and if you don't like it at least you can return it. Where as if you get it from shaw's office you can not return is my understanding. We like it. Now if I can only get the dam remote from the wife.

[DanG]

For a while they were selling an HDPVR box made by Pace and not the motorola ones. I've got the Pace one. It's got an eSATA port on the back and I have a 1TB drive set up off that port and that gives me roughly 175 hours of recording. Plus the box is a dual hdtv tuner, so I can watch HD and record HD at the same time.
If you can find one of those boxes, get it.

[Delphinus]

I think they still do sell it in smaller markets (like if you lived in Canmore instead of Calgary). That's the thing that annoys me about Shaw's PVR offerings. I'd happy with the off the shelf offerings so long as it had expandability on drive space. The Motorola ones don't, the Pace ones do. What I've been told is that eventually there will be something better offered for the bigger markets.. that's great but in the meantime I wonder if there's a way to use my current PVR on the HD tuner. I think I heard the firewire output on the tuner itself is disabled (thus making a blended solution either really difficult or outright not possible), is that true?

[Pescador]

Try the firewire Tony, two of mine work and one doesn't. I had one running to a media PC to record. There was an emulation program for the PC to load I'll have to check what it was.