Hi Bob,
I was glad to see you post on the pq difference specifically starchoice vs. shaw. I'm moving from the sc hd box to the 6208 and was a bit worried when I saw posts saying the hd quality on sc was superior to shaw. Nice to see you're having the opposite experience. Any other insights? I assume the kill bill was ppv sd? If so this will be great to record ppv and watch whenever and have good pq/sound..... hold me till shaw gets hd ppv.

Cheers

Hi Bob,
I assume the kill bill was ppv sd?

Cheers

No ... "Kill Bill" was not PPV it was "free"! as was "About Schmidt" which I also recorded but haven't watched as yet. And no they were NOT in SD, but glorious HDTV! Star Choice did have "Kill Bill" in HDTV on about the same time if you had the movie package (I think it was shown on MC and TMN at different times during the week).

And as I said "Kill Bill" was in Original Aspect Ratio with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. I am sure the PQ was better than DVD and the sound at least as good ... I was totally blown away by the sound (it would be a good demo movie) ... I have a good surround sound system so was about to fully appreciate the quality.

And I just discovered that "Austin Powers" is currently showing ... again in HDTV (PQ outstanding) and OAR (repeats later). Only prologic sound however. "21 Grams" is showing in HDTV again later in the week.

Bottom line there are am quickly discovering that there are more HDTV movies available than from Star Choice ... at least in the west where we get MC.

And here is an added kicker ... you are watching one of these commericail free uninterrupted movies "live" ... and the phone rings, mother nature calls, etc. you are not going to miss a minute. As long as you do not change channels the PVR will keep up to 45 minutes in memory (I am assuming that is SD ... they don't say how much in HD). You can pause the movie or rewind it to the point you left off ... and watch it "delayed" to the end.

Picked up a 6208 yesterday. Just getting set up. How do I program the setup such that I only see the channels I've subscribed to when I use the up and down channel keys? For the life of me I can't see how to do it. Is there an auto channel setup like on most TVs?

Dave_in_Olde_Oakville

Shaw's cable boxes do not have have a way to select channels to be controlled by the up and down keys. For the channel up key you can use the favourites key and, if you have a universal remote, you can use the favourites code for the channel up key. The favorites key can be programmed as to which channels are selected by this key.

I known I get very frustrated by this situation for the 8 years that I have had Shaw digital cable. The manufacturers of the TVs I have setup over the last 10 years or so have got it right when they allow you to deselect channels from up/down control. You could then use the favourites key for a few favourite channels. Much better.

What's with the "Regional Blackout". I can understand this on Star Choice where they show movies from TMN and MC. The TMN movies are blacked out in the west. But isn't Shaw only available in the west ... so why would they have TMN movies if this is the case?

HiDefBob

Shaw's channel 301 and 302 are from Cancom which shares TMN and MC movies on channel 302. I assume the same applies in your area. I don't get that upset because the blackouts would only be showing the repetative PBS programming instead of a blackout if they had separate channels for East and West unless there was a significant overlap in TMN and MC offerings. With the small amount of HD programming from these sources, especially MC, I doubt whether it makes that much difference.

I not upset ... I was just curious!

I am experiencing brief instances (about 3 or 4 an hour) of picture freezes/sound dropouts and partial picture pixelation/breakups lasting 1-3 seconds, particularly on channel 301. This evening those problems occurred while watching "American Dreams" and "Law & Order:CI". Star Choice (same source - NBC Detroit) showed no such problems. There were no problems during "Crossing Jordan". "Crossing Jordan" was perfect. CBS Movie so far has also been perfect.

Shaw came last week - boosted signal level from box and replace cable. They said if problems continued they would replace the box. The problems are far less than before they came. Should I have them replace the PVR ... or is anyone else experiencing the same problems.

I showed a lot of audio dropouts on the timeshifted broadcast of Crossing Jordan that came from NBC Detroit, so I stopped watching. I watched it on the NBC Seattle feed later and there was only one momentary drop.

I showed a lot of audio dropouts on the timeshifted broadcast of Crossing Jordan that came from NBC Detroit, so I stopped watching. I watched it on the NBC Seattle feed later and there was only one momentary drop.

I should correct my last posting ... it was "Cold Case" that had no problems.
I had the same problems as you at the beginning of "Crossing Jordan" so I switched to Star Choice where I experienced no dropouts ... signal was perfect. As I mentioned above ... Star Choice gets its eastern broadcasts from the same Detroit stations as Shaw. There must be an issue in transmitting the signal to Shaw here on the west coast.

Thanks. At least I know it was not my equipment.

I have been experiencing pixellation and audio dropouts which were esp. bad on Fri. evening on ABC HD Shaw 303.

I decided to re-introduce my amplifier into my setup last night as I was watching Cold Case and the same thing was happening. After I plugged in my amp, the problem disappeared. It might be a little too early to tell, but I think I might be OK now.

Hidefbob....since you've had both Starchoice and Expressvu, what is your take on the picture quality of the analog channels like Sportsnet, and TSN, CBC, Global, and the US network for non hdtv material?

I have a expressu 6000 and 5800 right now, considering switching.....

Thanks!

pcouture,

Are you talking about a cable signal amplifier? If so, and it solves your problems (I am having similar ones) ... can you let us know what make and model amp?

has no one else had this problem?

Has anyone else had the problem where the pvr didn't record what it was supposed to?

I have enterprise set to record every friday on upn. I checked this morning and it was still in the list of things to record. When i came home around 7:15, I went to check it, and nothing was recording.

This has happened a couple of times before, where i had something set to tape at 1 am, the daily show on the comedy network, and it didn't record. There's more than enough room on the hard drive to record the show.

Anyone else have this problem or know what to do? The guy at shaw said that the box they had there didn't have this problem so he didn't know why mine would have this problem. I told him, well that box isn't the one I have, then he told me that he sees no reason why this should happen and next time it does to call back and he refused to do anything else.

Sk1d: I haven't experienced the problem you describe.

Skd1,

I'm also experiencing the same type of problems with recordings. It seems to have started since the last firmware upgrade, although, I could be wrong about that.

It has happened at least 4 times in the past 2 weeks, where the recording is set to record, but when the time comes to record, it just doesn't.

A perfect example is last night where, my box is set to record Law and Order (HD)every Wednesday night at 10pm. It worked last week, but last night when I came home at 10:15, no recording. However, it did record the 4 other shows that were setup as well. It seems to be quite a random problem. So far I have not been able to figure out a pattern of any kind for when it chooses to skip a recording.

When I look at my future recordings I often find the listing showing a
program that I did not intend to record. If I try to delete he future recording it comes back with an error and asks to call 877 number for support. I did call the tech support and they had never heard of this problem. Shaw reset the box and the problem happened again last night.

I intend to keep this box and hope they cannot fix it until the 6412 comes out!

beanagee1, I have the same problem but the item, which is blank, cannot be deleted and it eats up 15% of my hard drive. I have logged it with Shaw but have not heard anything back.

I think that I've figured out why my 6208 was dropping the occasional scheduled recording.

In the recording options (per recording) there is a setting for Quantity. The default setting for the box is 1. The recordings that were being dropped for me were for shows that I had another recording from a previous weeks for.

For example, again, last night the box failed to record Without a Trace at 10pm, just as it had last week. However, the week before last, it recorded it as scheduled. This recording is still on the box as we haven't watched it yet. Since the Quantity setting is set to 1, it won't record the next week because there is already 1 "Without a Trace" recorded.

So, I think the fix is to set the Quantity to ALL. This way you won't miss a week, if you haven't yet watched the previous weeks recording of the same show/series.

However, I haven't yet been able to test this out for sure....but its seems logical to me.

Let me know if anyone else that was having this issue finds that this takes care of it. I'll post back with results as well once I can test it.

when it says save 1, i thought it meant that it would delete last week's and save record this weeks, thus saving one copy of the program.