My gateway has been down all day. I had called Shaw in the morning and was told it is a system problem. Now I have received an email advising an appointment has been set up 9 days from now to fix. I'm not too happy with this system especially when it takes so long before a tech will come out to fix.

I've been without tv since I woke up yesterday morning (Jan 7, 2012). Shaw's automated phone msg indicates they are aware of the problem...

I've done long term reboots (15 mins between all off/gateway on/portal on) without success.

My system has no channel info (retro guide lists no channels), and portal cannot connect to gateway.

Not sure of what to do next, shaw's automated service states:
"We are experiencing difficulties with gateways..."
(not connecting to portals)
"for all other issues please hold."
So I guess I don't get to talk to anyone until they officially solve it. Good thing I didn't get a portal in the bedroom and kept the old digi-box!

Thought I'd let you guys know I'm having this issue as well.

Interesting, am I correct in observing this is only happening to those who have had the Gateway installed recently, say the last couple of weeks?

So far I am unaffected here in Calgary but I can't say it will stay that way. I too have 'old PVRs' still connected so at least I will have something to watch if it does go off.

+1 for my Gateway being down as of this morning. I just had it installed on Jan 5th.

Luckily I keep my old PVR running, so it's not too frustrating.

Jetranger, don't know about the others experiencing this problem but I just had the gateway installed within the last week.

I'm rather confused when I was told it is a system wide problem and they are working on it but then I receive notification of an appointment being made for a tech to come out to the house. Don't know if they have determined what the problem is and so a tech will be coming out to fix or if they accidently booked one.

Ya, my system was installed on Tuesday, Jan 3 (had it up for about 3 days, lol)

That is a bit of a service concern!

I am also in Saskatoon and have had NO problems at all since my gateway install about 4 months ago ... Well I should say nothing major ... nothing a power cycle / reboot wouldn't fix.

Shaw will have some disgruntled customers if the scenario is black screen with a tech wait time of 9 days!

So much for the "Shaw Friends" idea ... friends don't make friends wait over a week to watch TV ...

This is much more than just channels not available. It's a nationwide outage affecting recent Gateway installs ONLY. Older installs aren't affected. No word from Shaw on a fix time. Sounds like they still don't know what's happened. I almost thru day 2 of blank screen now. I'm worried this could go on for days, if not weeks!! I have no way of knowing. What a PAIN!! I'll be looking for a credit on my next bill, assuming I don't drop Shaw and head to Telus or something.

Ok,
I managed to get Shaw to phone me (via messaging on Twitter @shawhelp). They called me and have now confirmed that the Gateway's can only be fixed via exhanging them. So if you have this problem, contact them (I found twitter better than holding for extended periods of time on the phone) and they'll schedule to send a tech to exchange the gateway and configure it.

I asked if I could just pick one up at the shaw office and do it myself, but they said there's quite a bit of configuration. I'm a fairly tech savy guy, but I figured I'd just let them do it.

I have a digibox that I kept after the new install of the gateway system, so I just swapped it back on.

BTW, the tech is coming on Thursday, so I'd get phoning if you want an appointment sooner rather than later!

I wonder when Shaw will come out with version 2 of the gateway and have to replace all our defective equipment for free. :p

Thanks Jbuddy. At least now we are getting some true information about what is going on with the equipment and that it has to be replaced.

It is rather disturbing that one must have to replace the gateway box if one had it recently installed. I'm an old fart so don't really understand all this new technology and why all of a sudden the recent equipment would be defective.

I only wish that Shaw would let us customers know this without having to read on the internet about their defective product.

A number of customers who have recently been installed with a Shaw Gateway system were identified as experiencing issues with their Gateway due to a recent update.

We have proactively assigned a number of customer service agents to call affected customers. This is happening right now.

Customers that have been affected will need a technician to visit their home for a fix if regular troubleshooting with an agent doesn't fix the issue.
Affected customers will see experience “No Media Found” or a black screen on all portals.
Customers can either call in or see our Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/Shawhelp/status/156137370033459200)support. Affected customers will also receive a credit due to the outage.
This outage also doesn't affect all Gateway customers only customers that have just been installed recently.

Once again sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for patience as we work to get this resolved asap.

A reminder - customers should still be able to connect their TV with the COAX cable to receive an analogue picture in the meantime.

I personally do not have this issue but upon checking work emails from home and posts here thought best to update anyone affected reading.

A reminder - customers should still be able to connect their TV with the COAX cable to receive an analogue picture in the meantime.


Unless you happen to live in an area where the digital reclaimation has already taken place. Or am I wrong about that?

If the Gateways were bricked by a software update, isn't there a way to restore the boxes to factory settings?

Having to take time off work again to wait for the tech to do a hardware swap is really inconvenient.

I had my Gateway and 2 portals installed this morning. I also have 2 PVRs remain active on my TVs. The recent gateway outage proved that my decision to keep my PVRs is correct.

Is there any charge in playing the games on the Gateway?

If Shaw is saying the only way to solve this issue is to 'swap' the box then I would guess it is a hardware issue rather than a software one. It could be a blown chip that happened as a result of the software update or something similar, one never knows.

There are pluses and minuses to having a centralized system like the Gateway system. Yikes, we're definitely seeing one of the big minuses. Such a nightmare scenario has always been in the back corner of my mind: if you're all in and the Gateway goes down, you're pretty much screwed. I still have a couple of non-PVR SD boxes and at the very least basic analogue is still available for now, but returning to that (even in emergency situations) is like using candles and pumping water at the well again. Then again, depending on where you live, you can get a good number of OTA HD channels with the old rabbit ears. Anyway, I definitely feel for those who are affected.

I don't think it's a blown chip. Probably it was a "firmware" update that the unit either glitched during install or was corrupted during download. That would render the unit useless (looses its marbles). In any event the update didn't install correctly and now the unit can't be talked to remotely. They would have to physically attach a cable (eg JTAG) and reprogram the unit at a more fundamental level.

That's just my 2 cents, but that typically is what happens when a unit is "bricked."

I might be mistaken, but I was lead to understand you shouldn't connect a tv directly (via coax) if it is inside the MOCA network - I was told that if you connect directly, rather than via the portal, you could blow your TV.

Not to be alarmist, but can someone who knows, confirm there is no danger in connecting a tv direcly within the MOCA network?

I've got one of my TVs connected directly to the coax 'inside' the MoCA network and there is no issue with the signal. I had an old CRT connected this way and now I have the new 'free' Sharp LCD connected the same way. This is more for 'testing' purposes but I also don't subscribe to one of the tiers but it still comes through over the coax and the other half likes some of those channels still. I would think if there was any concern about this there would be warning stickers on the Gateway.