Shaw HD/ Cable

[hoamic11]

Hey, so I haven't had cable in a quite a while and now that I'm looking at a new tv and the roommate needs to watch her beloved 'Gossip Girl', i'm looking into it.

anyways, as for the HD Receivers and what now, do you have to buy one of the boxes from shaw or can you get it from outside vendors or what not, like off ebay or something?

I have saw a couple posts about futureshop selling the HD (non-PVR) box for like $299 or around that, but I'm starting to think that the HDPVR would be a better buy in the long run.

And is there any other differences other than the harddrive size to the current 6416 to last years/previous 6412 with the 120gb hd?

thx

[nj2Type-S]

post pix of your roommate and you'll get faster replies! :D

[tictactoe2004]

Call Shaw, tell them you're thinking of going either Bell, Telus or Shaw.. Tell them you know they others are selling the PVR's for around $300-$350ish and ask them if they have any similar deals to get the HD-PVR.. They'll give you one at that reduced price.

[hedge]

You can't add the 'ebay' ones to Shaw any more unless the box is already in their system. Up untill march this was a viable option but I belive they changed the policy based on pressure from Comcast.

There's 3 options

6200 ($250) - HD box no pvr, single tuner, pretty crappy box really with a very poor SD tuner

3080 ($300) - SD PVR box, 80G hdd, never used one of these but they seem alright, they will record the hd channels but downconvert when outputting. If you record a lot of hd the 80G will be used up pretty fast

6416 - not really available any more unless you buy a used one, 160G HDD, dual tuner, analog + digital tuner

3416 ($500) -160G HDD, HD + dual tuner pvr, this is the cadillac, digital tuner only. Pretty much the same box as the 6416 except for no analog tuner.

I have 2 of the 6412's, the 6412/2300 (phase 3) is a much better box, It uses SATA drives where the older 6412's use IDE drives.

[hoamic11]

wow, thx, well I having used a PVR box yet, but seeing as it maybe something good to have b/c of what ppl have been saying about it's a good feature to have that live pause/playback. Watching UFC and pausing for the bathroom or playing back that knockout that went quick.

I really dont' know how much I'll be recording yet b/c, as i have mentioned I haven't had cable in awhile.

[hoamic11]

Does anybody have other tv services like bell or telus, if so, how they like it?

[joefufu]

i switched from shaw to bell last week and I can tell the picture improvement instantly, especially on HD channels. I wont' go back to shaw, and I pay less with bell

[Stealth22]

I have Bell and I'm happy with them. Reasonable price, great picture. There's just one thing I hate about them.

This summer, Bell apparently issued a software update to their PVRs (the non-HD ones).

We immediately noticed the new features, like event priority and stuff, but this new software is a POS. The PVR sometimes decides to just not record a timer that was set, even though its on the PVR schedule, a little clock appears next to the show in the program guide, and nothing was recording before to cause a conflict.

It also frequently sets timers to "skipped" right after they are set, even though there are no conflicts. You have to go in and manually restore the timer. If its set for a show that comes on every week or every day, it has to be done for every episode. I was pissed at the PVR for skipping my Flashpoint timer on Thursday. I had created it as a weekly timer and set the priority to 1. It created the timer perfectly, put the show in the schedule, and stuck a little clock next to it in the Guide. Later, I go to watch it (incidentally, right after the last live broadcast on CTV Vancouver was over), and SURPRISE! It's not there. Granted, CTV throws Flashpoint onto their website, but I would have preferred to watch it on my big-screen TV.

This PVR was a warranty replacement from Bell; we had similar issues with the one we initially bought from them. This replacement PVR seems to be even worse than the old one.

I don't feel like paying $600 (I think its $600) for the HD-PVR Plus when it's Bell's crappy software that is at fault here. I had tried to get them to give me one when the first receiver started doing this, but because I have a non-HD PVR, the replacement had to be the same model.

Any ideas on what I can do to get them to give me the new HD PVR Plus receiver? Or at least a discount off the inflated $600 pricetag?

EDIT: To the OP, sorry to hijack your thread. Bell is great except for this one issue I'm having. The PVR is well worth it. I'm hoping that I just got two bad units out of the lot or something. Depending on how much you watch TV, you may find the HD PVR Plus to be worth the extra cost; Several times I have wished I had it because it can record more than one program at once (i.e. watch one program while recording another), while the non-HD PVR I have cannot.

[Stealth22]

*bump*

hoamic11, did you end up going with a PVR from Shaw?

and anyone got an answer to my post above?

[hoamic11]

I haven't really decided yet, might just go with the good ole classic cable until i figure it out for now.