I have kind of an odd problem with one of my portals, it seems that if the system (tv + receiver) has been off and I turn it on I must press the OK button on the portal remote for it to wake up properly, any other button pressed such as pvr will cause it to lock up and I need to pull the plug.

channel 249, discovery channel HD is having lots of pixelation and audio drops, constantly happening. Can anyone check this channel to see if its just me, most other channels are perfect besides 2 eastern feed channels ABC and CBS HD ( 205, 206 ) which are having pixelation every now and then.
Thanks

249/DiscoveryHD is fine for me. 203 FoxHD is horribly pixelated tough.

thanks for checking and foxhd is fine here.. have had techs to the house and signals are perfect so not much can be done I guess, sadly.
They want to swap my gateway ( lose all my recordings ) but I dont think that will help because most HD channels are fine

Update: spent a few hours talking to shaw, well some of it on hold waiting for them. Turns out that my down datastream parameter was off on their end so they adjusted it and reset the box and what a huge difference. Now its near perfect where as before it was so pixelated that it was unwatchable. I hadnt noticed it before because I had not watched that particular channel. I checked a few other channels that had just minor pixelation problems before and now I dont notice any at all!!
I have talked to many techs about pixelation issues and audio drops since getting this system and have had a few to the house as well crews checking the connection across the street and none have ever noticed or even looked at parameter settings on their end. So I lucked out in getting a tech who knew enough to even look into that. Hope this helps someone having constant issues, perhaps they can look into the same?
cheers

Is it possible to tell if a recorded program has been watched ?
My son and I have similar tastes and we do not delete until we have checked with each other. He works nights, so we watch them separately .

I have the same deal with my wife, she turns the little icon to the right of the show to a green square. That way I know the show can be deleted. She's the only one who makes the change and its only the two of us so this works. Otherwise I haven't found any way to tell a show has been watched.

To turn the icon to a green square she selects info on the show then "keep until" then "until I delete".

Had Gateway system and 3 portals installed yesterday.
1 portal works, 1 portal had picture but suddenly went blank, 1 portal was setup on one tv but never worked after connecting it to the target tv and have a service call scheduled to replace it.

Any experts know why one of my televisions (connected via HDMI) would have blank screen but sound. It was working then picture suddenly disappeared while we were watching tv. Tried different inputs, including component. Tried removing power and starting up again. Still no picture, just sound.

Installer set all portals to 1080p30. I want to reset to 1080i since some mentioned here that 1080p can cause problems but I can't see picture to change it on 2 'defective' portals.

Surely couldn't have 2 out of 3 portals defective, could we?

Thanks

Anything's possible. It's really bad that your installer would set the Portals for 1080p. It's well known that this is NOT recommended. If he had even just read the instructions on the screen he would understand why.

Perhaps this has caused your problems and it has somehow damaged the video processor. I really wouldn't think this would be possible but you just never know with electronics these days.

On this topic. What is the problem in having the portal set to output at 1080p if the tv is a 1080p tv? I currently have 2 portals set this way (both tvs are 1080p - samsung), then i have another 3 set to 720p (best the tvs support - 2 are cheapy Dynex and the other is an LG) and the 6th is set to 1080i (phillips) as it is all that it can support. Everything seems to be working fine so far.

@LD500 Did the picture dissappear when you changed channels? If so, it might be that some channels don't convert well to the 1080p option the installer chose in your configuration. Since you have audio, you might be able to change channels blind and see if another channel improves the situation. Otherwise, only suggestion might be to try moving a small tv to the portal and connect with composite (RCA with video,audio L, audio R) to see if you can get some video output to be able to change the video output settings on the portal.

GWNorth:
No, we were watching a single station for a few minutes then the picture disappeared. There was some message from my TV like "the signal is unsupported...". That is NOT the same message my tv gives when the signal source is shutoff.
Seeing that message I initially thought that TV was not 1080p compatible but we were watching the same channel when it went blank.

Still, I can try flipping more channels to see if any come up. I tried a few presses but not much more.

When you say move a "small" TV, can't I just hook up composite to the same TV?
We did try component but not composite. I assume the portal automatically feeds a lower resolution signal to the composite and not 1080p.


Jetranger:
Interesting you say that. I remember the installer saying he uses 1080p30 as a default for every installation. I didn't think twice about it since I believe all my TV are 1080p compatible.

Can I move the 'broken' portal to the TV that works and test from there?
If a picture shows up then at least I can change it to non-1080p.
Or does something get messed up when I disconnect portals from the MOCA network?

hummm. Doesn't sound good if the picture dissappeared spontaneously.

I was thinking small TV so it would be easy to move and to have a known working unit to rule out specific TV issues. You can certainly try composite on the same TV. From your original post I thought maybe you had already tried that. Make sure you change inputs from you TV menu when you try component or composite.

I beleive you can swap portal locations as long as they are still on the MoCA network so you could try that too but if the installer never had the portal working to get properly updated and comunicating with the Gateway it might not work.

The portals must have been working because the installer set them up initially all on the same tv. Will try out composite later if I get a chance but might just wait for the next tech to come in a couple days.

Portals are completely interchangeable as far as location goes. The main difference would be the output setting to match any particular TV or monitor you are connecting to.

Regarding resolution setting; there has been plenty of discussion about what resolution should be used and why. Please read through the threads or search for this.

I am surprised to read that the installer set up all the portals on the same tv, unless he was unable to access the others at your request. He should have made sure they all were working in the locations you wanted.

I am amazed that he didn't know better than to set them to 1080p, there is no value in doing so at this point, it's contrary to what the display says... You would think these folks all got the same cheat sheet for setup.

I know I had to explain to the installer that it's not necessary to set all the resolutions and just set them to 1080i if the tv can handle it... It's not like that isn't right on the screen when you set it up.... der?????

Sadly, it comes as no surprise as many of the installers are contract people who either don't care much about how they do things but rather how quickly they can get to the next job or they just simply don't care enough to do a proper job. After seeing and hearing about some recent installs that are definitely not correct, I am thinking it is likely more a case of the latter.

If you have a poorly done install, I'd call Shaw and ask for an experienced 'company' tech to come and correct the problems you see.

The installer setup all 3 portals on one TV but did move them later to the actual TV locations and very quickly made sure a picture appeared. That's how we noticed that one TV never had a picture and he said the portal needs replacing. The 3rd TV was working but then suddenly the picture disappeared and never returned.

I can't say the installer didn't care at all. Nice enough guy. Where I thought there could have been improvement was if he spent just a few minutes making sure the picture was fine and if I had any questions. Basically once two televisions had a picture and the 3rd was deemed defective by him then he left. One TV must have fired up for a whole 2 seconds when he moved onto the next one. There was actually a couple other problems but I won't get into those here.

As for asking for a more experienced tech to fix the problems, it's the request I made but I was reminded that everyone was trained and familiar with the Gateway. Sure.

Getting a smooth install seems touch and go with the Gateway system. Just hope the next tech coming by will be able to solve the issues. Then I'll deal with the inherent bugs from there.

Wow, sure enough I tried composite output to my TV and had a picture.
Once I had the picture I went into the setup screen and changed it from 1080p30 to 1080i.
This worked for both portals that were not working.

There still seems to be a problem where on one portal the guide is missing a block of channels. Something like 203 to 209 is blank space. Or, is it still loading?

Called Shaw and they suggested I still keep the service appointment.
Good idea, still want someone to check the splitter setup to ensure it is best arranged for the new equipment. And probably double check these two 'defective' boxes.

So far, the composite input idea worked !!!
Now why did the installer not try that? He tried component but not composite.

Thanks for the assistance guys!!!

So after you got it set back to 1080i, you switched back to HDMI or component connection and this worked properly? Sounds like your TVs don't like the 30hz refresh, which is interesting to know... Someone else posted earlier about problems with some TVs dealing with 480 over a specific connection type. Care to post the specs for those TVs?

I wonder if the reset button on the back of the portals truly is disabled or if it could have got you back into a safe state.

The grid guide has some known defects with missing channels. I just ended up turning it off...

Yes, once the picture showed up through composite I changed the portal to 1080i and then went back to HDMI connection. All seems fine, except probably the regular bugs.

I don't have the specs for the TV. One is a Sony XBR 32" LCD about 4 years old. If I recall correctly it did support a 1080p signal but had 720p native resolution. The other TV is a new Panasonic plasma and should definitely support 1080p resolution.

I also wanted to try the reset button but was advised not to by someone at tech support.

When I watched CBC News last night I would say the picture has ever so slightly less detail than the old Motorola PVR but oddly seems to have slightly boosted contrast. It could be only my perception here but that's what I would guess at. Either way both picture qualities are very close.