Yep, no sort-by-date for recordings yet.

Catnip mentioned earlier that the lag in skipping forward seems to be gone now, but it's not only that. Skipping forward/backward, fast forwarding/reversing, frame advancing, etc., all seem to work more smoothly now.

I believe I have also come across another quirk in that you can't advance one frame at a time after you have used the slo-mo. If you are watching a recording and pause the picture, hit 'fwd' once to run the slo-mo for a bit and then 'pause' again, you can press the 'skip' button to do the single frame advance, the 'click' sound happens like it is registering the button press but the picture remains 'paused'.

That quirk is still there.

Also, pressing Last still won't take you back to a recording if that happens to be the last thing you were viewing, but yeah, that's probably more of a feature request than a bug.

Don't know if it is possible for me to have received the update here so soon but last Friday afternoon I lost the Gateway cable TV service for several hours (Shaw phone and internet were fine). The lights on the Gateway changed from the usual all 5 lights steady on to only the first and last lights steady on while the 2nd and 4th lights blink occasionally. (I did call support at that time but after an hour on hold listening to bad Xmas music, it was just too painful.)

Anyway the next day the cable was working again but the light pattern on the Gateway remains the same strange one as when it wasn't working. Now I discover that the LAST channel function on the remote (on all 3 of my portals) is non-functional - sometimes it is able to jump to a higher number channel but never the reverse, usually it does nothing at all. Could have sworn that function was working fine before. I have reset the gateway and portals several times. Wish I knew how to check the firmware version...

Alberta hasn't received the '+' code yet so I'd just wait a couple more days and you might have the issues fixed by mid week.

I just wanted to qualify my statement: "Skipping forward/backward, fast forwarding/reversing, frame advancing, etc., all seem to work more smoothly now." Just to be clear, I'm not implying that it's absolutely free of lags now, but overall, it's noticeably less laggy than before.

I also noticed that if you pause then hold down the Skip button (thus getting slo-mo) instead of clicking it to advance frame-by-frame, it will eventually freeze. I don't recall if this "issue" existed before. I'm using quotation marks because maybe you're just not supposed to hold down the button like that--there's already a forward slo-mo function, after all.

Anyway, not sure why I'm bothering to report this stuff since everyone will find out shortly (must have something to do with having no life). That's it for me then.

Thanks for reporting Metrovan, I appreciate that you have "no life".
And thanks Jet, some of these things were standard on the old PVR so whether they're supposed to be there or not sometimes becomes gray.

@MetroVan I agree with the "more smoothly" statement. It works great for a few hours (no hesitation or lag) but then it will go back to it's old self every now and then. They still have some work to do in that department, but it IS better than before, IMO.

All weekend, the video and sound on all channels has been full of freezes and drop outs and stutters. This has been happening on all 3 portals. Problem still persists today.

Have you power cycled your Gateway box? It may be worth a try, sounds like you are not communicating properly with the Portals.

I had the same problem too. Yesterday I did the "full" cycle on both the portals & gateway.

1) I unplugged all my portals
2) I unplugged my gateway for 30 seconds
3) Plugged the gateway back and and waited 5 min for it to totally boot up
4) Plugged my portals back in.

So far in the last 24 hrs since I have done this, the dropping of sound, stuttering, freezing and pixillization has almost fully dissapeared. It didn't help to speed up the guide at all though.

My Samsung TV won't play the portal through the HDMI. It says format unsupported. It works through the component cables. It just got setup today. Any idea's?

I'm just wondering if anyone here has heard of the plans that sometime in the New Year that Shaw plans to release a firmware that will allow the Motorola non-pvr boxes to act as portals? I was talking to a Shaw installer today and asked him if they were installing many of the Gateway systems here yet, and he told me that this was going to happen sometime within the next 2-3 months.

My Samsung TV won't play the portal through the HDMI. It says format unsupported. It works through the component cables. It just got setup today. Any idea's?Make sure you have 1080i set as your display mode on the Portal. I am using HDMI on my Samsung TV with no problem.

been searchign all over, on the gateway how are you getting the software and version numbers off the gateways and portals ?

It's in the installer menu but accessing it can result in creating more trouble than it's worth so doing so is highly discouraged. There will be a future feature added that will show this information in a read only format.

Yes, no real need to go in there; more dangers than benefits. So far the firmware updates have come with some definite way you can identify them. This time around it is the fact that the system tells you that it needs a reboot, and that that you get smooth slow motion after the update.

^^^
Not true.

I got the update - never got a reboot request.

The skip back/forward functions are still terrible. :(

The reboot request will show up but as long as there are no recordings taking place or scheduled withing a certain time frame, the system will reboot itself and you won't see the request message. This is a standard thing for the software update process on the Gateway system apparently.

About the caveats that were expressed concerning entering the hidden Installer menu and finding out what the software versions are for the Gateway and Portal, I totally agree with what was said. To enter that minefield, you have to be a bit foolish and nutty (which is why I'm in there all of the time). I also think, however, that we're all grownups here and we're capable of deciding for ourselves whether we should enter or not. So with that in mind, if you decide to go for it, the instructions for entering the Installer menu are posted here (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showpost.php?p=1336644&postcount=246) (please read Hugh's own caveat at the bottom of the post).

Before you run off, note that the instructions have an error: "Back, Next, Back, Next" is the right combination. The software versions can be viewed by scrolling over to Diagnostics, then scrolling up to Service Status and pressing OK.

Portal:
Current Software Version: 7.0.1.32X5R-P.340684
Update Software Version: 7.0.1b.9X5R-P.342538

Gateway:
Current Software Version: 7.0.1.32G5BR-P.340684
Update Software Version: 7.0.1b.9G5BR-P.342538

Just got the request (Chilliwack) 07:35 Pacific

I noticed last night that the speed of the portals appear to have got considerably better, the fast forward and reverse don't get the error message any more, no matter how many times I hit the button on the remote.

Out of interest, has anyone else noticed you can't fast forward or rewind on the Galaxie music channels?