Ok, after 5 years of boycotting shaw and cable in general I decided to give them and HD a try, with their introduction of the new pace box and 1TB expander. As I should have known, it was a dumb move.

Anyway, had all the common problems off and on with recordings not working; 1 or 2 minute error, freeze up and call support, etc... happened mostly with american idol and could be fixed the odd time by starting the recording early. Anyway, after a few more issues I decided to take everything back and return to downloading my HD content. However, Shaw cried that swapping the box has often worked so they wanted to try that and thus sent out a technician to swap the box. Technician said it would take 30 minutes or so for shows to return... the usual...

Well, now when I go to my recordings the HD says 60% full but I cannot access the programs. Call shaw and they say that the HD has to pair with the Pace box and this will have to involve reformatting the HD and I would unfortunately lose my recorded shows. Oh, no problem shaw… I’ve spent the last month accumulating a bunch of crap that I never intended watching anyway… yeah, right.. I was/am completely miffed.

I told them to bring my old box back so I can watch my shows and if they are not planning to rectify this with the next firmware upgrade in March that I will be returning everything for a full refund and be cancelling my service. The very idea that the pace box failing would result in the loss of the ability to view recordings on the HD/PVR is laughable, unacceptable, unbelievable, ridiculous, and completely and utterly stupid. How a company can be so irretrievably crappy is beyond me.

So, in an attempt to mitigate this companies’ irretrievable stupidity, does anyone know how to get a new pace box to recognize an extender that has been paired to a different pace box? Has anyone been able to overcome the encryption built in by shaw in their paranoid delusion?

If not, I guess I return everything and go back to the HTPC because I absolutely cannot support this silliness. I feel so stupid that I mistakenly thought Shaw had perhaps done something right. I may give Bell a go since I am in this try out mode with our pathetically limited HD providers here in AB but doubtful they are any better.

Thank you in advance if anyone has any input on this.

Cheers,

Sois

As indicated in the eHDD threads for Shaw, I believe that the index for the programmes resides on the internal HDD, therefore you cannot transfer the eHDD to another PVR. The programming is still there (hence the 60% full reading), however, you cannot access due to no index.

The programmes are encrypted and cannot be "hacked" in any way. The indexing on the internal is done to preclude people from sharing drives/programming with other people.

Sorry to feel that way, you have rights to cancel and check out other provider, telus.

57, I don't think Summit has internal hard drive. It's being sold as single tuner driveless set top box, and when external drive is added it becomes dual tuner PVR.

Nevertheless, index and content are kept on separate partitions and encryption indeed prevents you watching content recorded on another box. Bottom line, you end up not being able to watch what you recorded.

That's what happens when consumer's rights are put behind corporate profits. Copyright protection at its best. NOT! :(

Sorry about not realizing that the Summit was a STB, not PVR. Too many to keep track of these days. At least I was right about the "transportability" issue.

I should point out this is not Shaw's fault, it's put in place by the manufacturer and the various copyright holders. That being said, if blame must be placed then the customer blames the provider, and I understand that. Probably they don't deserve the vitriol, however.