I am still with Shaw and have just signed up for their home phone and internet. As I have posted before, I have not experienced the poor quality HD from Shaw (since 2002). I have had issues in the past relative to signal strength and a lemon of a DCT6412 PVR, but both have been resolved by Shaw. I have had occasional sound drops and heavy pixelation in recent months, but it has been rare and intermittent. The point is, Brian, that there are many satisfied Shaw customers, just as there may be dissatisfied customers. This holds true for Bell and Starchoice as well. If you are not finding a resolution to your Shaw issues, I'd look elsewhere too.

If you're getting pixelation every 3 seconds or so, I 'd have Shaw come in and check your signal strength, cabling, and your DCT. Maybe you've done this already. If so, I'd call them again.

Homerun derby on SportsnetHD is quite horrible lol. Audio and video issues throughout. :rolleyes:

It's been going on so long I think they have convinced me that this what its suppose to be. :D

Hi Brian... welcome to DHC!
I posted various times on this thread around Jan/Feb had the same old problems with video/audio quality with Shaw (as they still remain). Had Techs coming half a dozen times to my house with little to no change on the quality. Moved on to Bell and have been more than happy to have made the change (No audio drops or macroblocking); I even got a free HD PVR for a year with them... I think you should check your options with satellite; it is not more expensive for me and I get almost twice the channels than what I got with Shaw.
Brian, what you're seeing is called macroblocking. It can be caused by a lot of things, including *cough* an overly compressed picture from the satellite or cable provider.

Complaints about $haw's PQ (picture quality) have really ramped up a lot in the last year or so. Ditto for the audio drops. $haw was working with members of this forum to test and hopefully resolve the problems and then abruptly stopped communicating with the test group.

Where are you located? The general consensus on this board seems to be that the problems in the greater Vancouver area are much worse than in Alberta.

the grass isn't always greener.

i'm leaving bell after an AWFUL 2 year contract with them... PQ was fine and all, but, man, if you have any reason to have to call them ever, it's absolutely terrible. even talking to retention today when they were trying to get me to stay a bell subscriber, i was just so annoyed, i can't believe i maintained my cool on the phone.

jfplay Im am from Abbotsford..
Just strange how different some channels are..
Like channels 200, 201 and 202 (ABC, CBS @ NBC ) are usually perfect.
Yet 203 which is Fox is almost unwatchable, even on the non HD shows.
Not sure what chanel TLC is but that is horrible also...
Just hope it gets better soon. I like Shaw as a cable suplier..They are so much better than when we had Rogers here..

the grass isn't always greener.

i'm leaving bell after an AWFUL 2 year contract with them... PQ was fine and all, but, man, if you have any reason to have to call them ever, it's absolutely terrible. even talking to retention today when they were trying to get me to stay a bell subscriber, i was just so annoyed, i can't believe i maintained my cool on the phone.
Yeah, I've heard that from a lot of different people.

If you can get through you're lucky to have someone who understands what you're trying to say and vice versa.

Their customer service is "legendary." I think that's why $haw pushes their 24/7 tech support so hard. Smart marketing.

But I think the fact that there are more audio and visual complaints in this forum than every other service provider combined speaks volumes about the quality of $haw's product.

Yeah, I've heard that from a lot of different people.

If you can get through you're lucky to have someone who understands what you're trying to say and vice versa.

Their customer service is "legendary." I think that's why $haw pushes their 24/7 tech support so hard. Smart marketing.

But I think the fact that there are more audio and visual complaints in this forum than every other service provider combined speaks volumes about the quality of $haw's product.
the one benefit to bell's customer support:

if at first you don't get the answer you're looking for, call back once or twice... you'll get it.

Anybody else having problems with TSN HD? It's incredibly blocky, making football all but unwatchable. Right now, it seems that CBC HD is out.

Anybody else having problems with TSN HD? It's incredibly blocky, making football all but unwatchable. Right now, it seems that CBC HD is out.

Yes cbc hd is out. It was flakly earlier during the baseball game as well. I agree that TSN hd does look choppy. Watchable, but not great. The commercials looked choppy as well.

TSNHD dropped out for a while during F1 this afternoon and when it was back the PQ was hideous. Sort of a left-right vibration effect. Now I know F1 us upscaled SD but it usually looks much better.

I'm watching IRL now and it looks fine.

The CFL game definetely looked bad, lots of macroblocking...but not signifigantly worse than normal. I guess I noticed more artifacting and noise during wider shots than I normally do. Any tight shots were as blocky as normal.

I've also been watching Big Brother of 206 and the audio drops are just ridiculous.

as a newbie can i say thanks to you all

I am just about to make the switch to HD for the olympics and the hockey and have just spent some quality work time reading this thread and now will not go near Shaw with a 40ft pole! never liked them anyway.

can anyone suggest the best alternative in downtown Vancouver for high speed internet and HDTV. sounds like its between telus and Bell.

thnx

Depending where you are, you might be able to get Novus...

Shaw is good for internet, TV not as much.

have already checked, cannot get novus.

we have shaw internet at the moment and have no issues, but would prefer to get a bundle to save some $$. dam expensive services here...

One thing about Shaw is that there is no contracts. While I know a lot of members, particularly in Vancouver, have had issues with Shaw. I must repeat again, though, that there are many satisfied customers. Telus TV may be an option. You are limited to 2 TV's and the boxes are free once you sign a contract. I have no doubt that their HDTV service will be good. Their phone and internet service is highly reliable. As I have posted elsewhere, I just switched my phone/internet service over to Shaw to gain some benefits relative to bundling. First thing I noticed was that the Shaw internet was twice as fast as my Telus enhanced 2.5MB service.

As an aside on my last Telus e-bill, they advised that their digital tv service was going up $3/month for those not on a plan.

Good luck in your choice!

We've had minor problems with Shaw's phone / internet / TV service. They've gone down completely 3 times in 9 months for several hours or more. When I complained about this in a survey, they told me I should have called to report the outage. Ummm... ya OK :) Oh and our Shaw phone doesn't work during a power outage (and yes we tried an old-fashioned wired phone when we wanted to make a call.)

The prices for phone and internet are so good that we put up with the outages. The other big plus is if I care to call customer support I'm pretty sure a real, live, friendly human is likely to answer pretty quickly. Just thinking about calling Telus makes me shudder with distaste.

We are really unhappy with Shaw's HD - it often looks more like YouTube than HD. you could try to get Shaw to let you borrow a box for a tryout. Don't buy one (they are ridiculously expensive, I think to keep customers from switchng) until you are satisfied with what you see and hear.

Any internet based phone system should also be connected to a power battery backup so you still have phone service during power outages but this isn't the place to explain this. Sorry for being off topic but I thought it needed to be said.

The battery is supposed to be built into the phone box supplied by Shaw.

Your phone should function durring a power outage. I have had shaw phone for 2 years and have never experienced an outage. In that time I have experienced several small power failures. The other day our block had a 4 hour outage. Hydro was replacing a faulty transformer in our Lane. I checked the phone and it was fine. Call shaw perhaps you have a faulty battery in your phone modem.

Put it this way - no matter how much or how little you pay for Shaw's television service, it will NOT be real "HD"...