I haven't had a sound drop in a LONG time but the macroblocking is still terrible on most fast moving sports or graphics in general.

My problem is it looks like there is big time jpg type compression. I have a 96" screen, and you can see it whenever there is text on the screen. Maybe I'll take a picture one day. It is clearly degrading the picture quality. When I watch videos from my computer at 720p, it is obvious they are better than Shaw.

Has anyone noticed that Movie Central is out of sync? Sometimes it seems to only be about a frame out of sync, but sometimes it's downright unwatchable.
I contacted Shaw awhile back and they advice they gave me was to unplug my HDMI cable and restart my PVR. That made no difference.

I've just switched to shaw from Bell to save money with their bundle deals. I went from the 9242 to the 3416.

Shaw has Bell beat with the audio. I had two 9242s and both suffered audio dropouts on the HD channels with both RCA and toslink (although the toslink was worse). I'm fairly certain this was caused by the PVR because it mainly happened with certain scenes - an all black screen with white letters fading in and out would pretty much always cause it. It also varied on different channels. Overall it was bothersome but since it didn't happen that much I could live with it.

Picture quality, on the other hand, has to go to Bell by a long shot. The macroblocking in fast moving scenes is horrible with shaw on many HD channels. I'm pretty disappointed.

The 9242 beats the 3416 in many others ways which shouldn't be a surprise. I'm going to see how the PQ looks going through the firewire/PC. If the FireSTBPlugin for DVBLink works as it should then I'll try using Windows 7 MC with my shaw signal. This prospect is about all that's keeping me from switching back now.

After reading about the bugs in 7MC, especially the faulty tuner logic, I decided that was a dead end for now. I called Bell back and they ended up giving me 20% off for the next year. Sorry shaw I like your customer service, phone and internet services but your HD PQ is not good enough.

Edit: After watching the bell 9242 again I think shaw's HD channels do look more detailed when there is little or no motion but overall I'm much happier with bell's PQ, particularly SD.

I've noticed taht too. Everyone's eyes are different. If you have great vision and pay attention to detail and compare Bell with Shaw, you'll see that Shaw's HD is far from spectacular.

Shaw's HD PQ just keeps getting worse; tonight's Edmonton-Montreal game on CBCHD shouldn't even be called HD because of all the pixelating and macroblocking. With the addition of History HD, Shaw is clearly trying to stuff too much into its finite bandwidth. Ugh, even on its worst day, BEV was better than this crud...

Shaw's HD PQ just keeps getting worse; tonight's Edmonton-Montreal game on CBCHD shouldn't even be called HD because of all the pixelating and macroblocking. With the addition of History HD, Shaw is clearly trying to stuff too much into its finite bandwidth. Ugh, even on its worst day, BEV was better than this crud...
CBC HD (Vancouver) PQ has always been horrible since I first got my HD box and noticed it 2 months ago. I've always been watching all 3 local OTA channels (CBC, Global, CTV) before I got cable and I can assure you that although Global and CTV feeds with Shaw are of similar quality to the OTA signals (all 18Mbps), Shaw's CBC HD feed is horrible compare to the OTA signal.

I've made some OTA vs Shaw screenshots for everybody to judge. FYI, in order to make the comparison as fair as possible, I use my 10MP DSLR camera set up with tripod and remote shutter on my Samsung 40" 40LN4061F LCD HDTV. I first start my DVR on the same channel I'm going to work on with the OTA. Then I switch my TV to OTA. When I see an interesting frame to freeze, I press the "Still" button on my TV remote. Then, I have all the time I need to hit the remote shutter button on my DSLR. Next, I set the TV input for the DVR. I cue to the same frame and hit the "Still" button on the TV (takes lots of trial-and-error to get the timing right). Then, I hit the remote shutter just like I do for the OTA shot.

These are paired-up pics alternating between OTA and Shaw screenshots.
OTA (CBC, Battle of the Blades):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/3b654b52029808/
Shaw (CBC):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/89e43e52029809/

OTA (CBC):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/c1290f52029810/
Shaw (CBC):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/3327be52029811/

OTA (CBC):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/361f2252029812/
Shaw (CBC):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/0d975c52029813/

OTA (CTV, Desparate Housewives):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/f02e1252029814/
Shaw (CTV):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/b8dbe352029816/

OTA (Global, Shaw commercial):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/a83e3d52029821/
Shaw (Global, Shaw commercial):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/3e82c452029826/

OTA (Global):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/e9548652029832/
Shaw (Global):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/9a4bfe52029837/

These are half/half pics with left half of the screen in Shaw and right half of screen in OTA:
(CBC)
http://www.imagebam.com/image/c3cc6752029841/
http://www.imagebam.com/image/3c100252029844/
http://www.imagebam.com/image/3a3e5852029848/
(CTV)
http://www.imagebam.com/image/feae0b52029852/
(Global)
http://www.imagebam.com/image/13cf3a52029854/
http://www.imagebam.com/image/04ee0a52029855/

These are also half/half pics like above, except that both OTA/Shaw halves show the same coverage (Note that this set shows Shaw on the LEFT and OTA on the RIGHT):
(CBC)
http://www.imagebam.com/image/72cb5f52029856/
http://www.imagebam.com/image/66da5952029858/
http://www.imagebam.com/image/d255e352029860/
(CTV)
http://www.imagebam.com/image/f11b9d52029861/
(Global)
http://www.imagebam.com/image/eb9d5552029863/
http://www.imagebam.com/image/f7075552029864/

This is the gallery of all the pics:
http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/ca593c97ecd4076f7c768363309f4354/

As you can see, Shaw's CBC HD feed is much worse than its OTA feed, compare to CTV or Global feeds.

Thank you ChrisChu, that's pretty persuasive evidence of the poor quality of the signal provided by Shaw. That skating shot looks worse than YouTube. Both their HD and SD channels are over compressed to the point there is visibly excessive blocking and mosquito noise.

That's the major reason we dropped Shaw cable service - the poor picture quality.

These are also half/half pics like above, except that both OTA/Shaw halves show the same coverage (Note that this set shows Shaw on the LEFT and OTA on the RIGHT):
(CBC)
http://www.imagebam.com/image/72cb5f52029856/
http://www.imagebam.com/image/66da5952029858/

Do you have this backwards? For the first two CBC images the left side looks less compressed.

Do you have this backwards? For the first two CBC images the left side looks less compressed.
Sorry, I meant to say for the second set of half/half pics "Note that this set shows OTA on the LEFT and Shaw on the RIGHT" because that's the opposite layout to the first set of half/half pics (Shaw/OTA).

That's the major reason we dropped Shaw cable service - the poor picture quality.
Please note that the bad PQ is limited to CBC HD feed with Shaw. Shaw is just fine with Global and CTV feeds, as shown in my other pics. I suspect the CBC/Shaw problem is not an intended bandwidth reduction strategy. That's why I did the side-by-side comparison looking for more info here. I don't mean to bash on Shaw.

I am not bashing on Shaw, just stating facts as I see them. We compared OTA CBC with Shaw during the summer Olympics and were very dissatisfied, so it sounds like the situation has not improved in over a year.

If the PQ of CBC is worse and the others are even, then overall the PQ of Shaw is worse than OTA.

If the PQ of CBC is worse and the others are even, then overall the PQ of Shaw is worse than OTA.
PQ of local stations from any TV service provider will never be better than OTA so this is really a moot point. If all local station PQ was like CBC HD with Shaw, I wouldn't have posted my side-by-side picture comparison. What I'm interested in is why CBC is especially worse and that seems like an honest mistake by Shaw (or CBC) instead of an act by Shaw to save bandwidth.

I don't believe that it is a moot point since a big reason that a lot of people got cable in the first place was to get better reception (i.e. picture quality) than they could get via OTA. In any case your question is quite valid no matter my opinion :)

Is it just my imagination - or do the HD channels look better in the last week or so? I noticed that things suddenly seem less pixelated now. I know there was a new firmware update for the Motorolas in the last couple of weeks to allow external SATA drives, but was there more to it than that?

I've noticed it with the HD movie channels and hockey games mainly.

Is it just me...?

I havent noticed an improvement. It's been about the same for a few months now, but somewhat worse if use HDMI mode.

I'm not sure if it's me either, but the quality of the sound on HD channels seems to be much more robust than it was before. There's more surround sounds, more bass, etc. I've been dealing with Shaw support on my sound drop issues and they apparently made some changes to the signal in my area (I have no idea what they did or where they did it). Or it could be just me.

I must be on something too because last night the 5.1 was amazing...The Dodgers game, Sens game, National Geographic, HistoryHD...the back surrounds were louder than usual it was great.

I haven't noticed an improvement, but then again my HD has been very good. I have to wonder though whether there is improvements since the Nitro service came in. There must be more bandwidth available one would think.