It would be nice if we had some control over the software that these things use or if we had a voice about it - prior to Shaw re-bundling their prices, you could actually pick out a line on the bill that showed $1.99 for nothing else but... DCT2000HT. I was told that was to cover the 5 year exchange warranty and the cost of maintaining the DCT and there was no way of not having it there. I wonder where that money has gone to....

http://www.shaw.ca/Tmplt.asp?PageID=134

The Shaw Digital Terminal (model DCT2000HT) provides a SPDIF digital output for connection to your A/V receiver for future broadcasts of the new Dolby Digital 5.1-channel format, and an S-Video output in addition to the standard line and RF video outputs.

All our Shaw Digital Terminals incorporate a two-channel Dolby Digital decoder with stereo analog outputs for compatibility with conventional stereo and home theatre systems. We offer the DCT2000 HT with S-Video and SPDIF digital audio outputs. The DCT1000, that many customers already have in their homes, on lease or purchased, also has a Dolby Digital decoder.

Purchased DCT's come with a 5-year exchange warranty from Shaw and a universal remote control. There is no charge for in-home service calls, if required.

Just got off the phone with Mathew (one of the reps on the phone) and he offered a suggestion to those of us who want digital sound on our DCT 2000's ...

If we call and ask, we could offer to trade in / swap straight over our DCT2000 boxes for the new DCT2500 boxes... with the digital outs and such... no questions... apparently Shaw doesn't have any of the old DCT2000's in their warehouse for the rental crowd and they need ones to rent out...

One of the catches is that the current DCT2000 must still be in the 5yr warranty window (so he says). Call and find out for yourselves.

I'm getting mine tomorrow at one of the Edmonton retail stores... :)

I guess whining and complaining does in fact get things moving at Shaw :)

take care all

Tog_2

Just got off the phone with Mathew (one of the reps on the phone) and he offered a suggestion to those of us who want digital sound on our DCT 2000's ...

If we call and ask, we could offer to trade in / swap straight over our DCT2000 boxes for the new DCT2500 boxes... with the digital outs and such... no questions... apparently Shaw doesn't have any of the old DCT2000's in their warehouse for the rental crowd and they need ones to rent out...

One of the catches is that the current DCT2000 must still be in the 5yr warranty window (so he says). Call and find out for yourselves.

I'm getting mine tomorrow at one of the Edmonton retail stores... :)

I guess whining and complaining does in fact get things moving at Shaw :)

take care all

Tog_2

Heh, that's great for the Edmonton area! :-?

I don't think it's the same out here (Kelowna) since I asked about an upgrade path and they said, "no."

I called Shaw and asked them for a service call to fix the Dolby Digital 5.1 "problem" on DCT 2000. The rep looked up the model and told me that it will not receive dolby digital. I told him that I bought this unit becasue it was suppose to have dolby digital. I was told that they will put a note on my file and I can go in and get a new box. It workded.

I brought the unit home but it would not work. Apparently you need to call Shaw after you have the unit plugged in and hooked up to the cable.

I called Shaw and asked them for a service call to fix the Dolby Digital 5.1 "problem" on DCT 2000. The rep looked up the model and told me that it will not receive dolby digital. I told him that I bought this unit becasue it was suppose to have dolby digital. I was told that they will put a note on my file and I can go in and get a new box. It workded.

I brought the unit home but it would not work. Apparently you need to call Shaw after you have the unit plugged in and hooked up to the cable.

Your post inspired me to try the same thing and here are the results:

Called Shaw, left a message with their customer service group for a call back and received a call back within the time I would have had to hold.

I told the CSR that I had purchased the DCT2000 with the understanding that it would be able to handle DD5.1 but that I had heard there was a flaw in the box and that it would not be able to receive that signal. I then mentioned that I had heard Shaw has switched to the DCT2500 which solved this problem and was wondering if I could swap them.

The CSR told me that they were not exchanging the two boxes and said she would put a note on my account regarding this, I mentioned that I had heard of some other people who had swapped the two boxes and she reinterated that Shaw is not swapping these boxes.

Before I could launch into a more passionate plea she said that she had put a note on my account and I could exchange my DCT2000 at any location. I asked if that would be an exchange for a DCT2500 and she said yes.

I drove to the location, gave them my old DCT2000 and got a brand spankin new DCT2500 (the CSR kind of scowled through the whole transaction but what do I care).

Got home, called in to get it activated and "bang" six months of struggling to get this issue addressed was over. Panic Room was on Shadow Lane, I'm getting a DD5.1 signal on my receiver and the speakers testify to that.

I'm a happy Shaw customer today.

Couple of notes:

I live in Calgary (they have a nice new building on 32 Ave NE).

I wouldn't wait too long to act on this as I am not sure how long they will allow this.

:D :D :D

Well, the Shaw guy came out today, and things went exactly as I expected.

First he didn't know what DD5.1 programming was on when he arrived, so I tried to look it up at www.moviecentral.ca and of course the internet connection was not working (also Shaw, but merely a coincidence :wink: ) so I couldn't check either.

So this fellow says when he was stationed in Calgary 2 1/2 years ago there were reports of this problem, but there are no reports of it here in the Okanagan.

Then he went through all the settings of my surround receiver and remarked how nice the Dolby ProLogic surround sounded, and that most people would never notice that it wasn't in 5.1.

I asked him outright if he had any other terminals in his truck that he could swap to see if it solved the problem, such as a 2500. He said they don't have any 2500s and if there is a problem they swap to 5100s (!). Of course, he could not try out a 5100 because if it didn't solve the problem he would have to explain why he swapped a $200 terminal with a $700 terminal if nothing was fixed. Apparently he can't just "try" the other equipment, he has to actually give it to me. Odd policy.

Then he said he would call his supervisor and see if he could get a temporary swap to try a 5100, but instead he returned from his truck with a used 2000 to try instead. So he swapped this unit in, and of course it didn't work.

At one point he had the bright idea that the surround receiver was maybe doing DD5.1 but just not displaying the mode indicator because of "the way the cable box was outputing the signal" :o Oooookay... I had to insist that I demonstrate with the DVD player what DD5.1 decoding looks like on the surround receiver. After that he dropped his former line of "reasoning".

So he tried to contact another guy, Paul, who should know about this problem. Paul could not be raised by radio, so he said he would call me back if got ahold of Paul today, or he would talk to Al on Monday - Al would definitely know what the problem was.

As he was leaving he rambled a bit about how all the equipment seemed to be working so the problem might simply be in the head end or the with signal providers and it might just not work. I responded by saying that if it "just" doesn't work, then it "just" needs to be fixed.

So at the end of the day, I still have a DCT2000, albeit a used, scratched-up one and no DD5.1. I await my phone call.

Stage 1 is complete.

Sounds like it would be a hell of a lot easier to move to Alberta. :x

Just got off the phone with Mathew (one of the reps on the phone) and he offered a suggestion to those of us who want digital sound on our DCT 2000's ...

If we call and ask, we could offer to trade in / swap straight over our DCT2000 boxes for the new DCT2500 boxes... with the digital outs and such... no questions... apparently Shaw doesn't have any of the old DCT2000's in their warehouse for the rental crowd and they need ones to rent out...

One of the catches is that the current DCT2000 must still be in the 5yr warranty window (so he says). Call and find out for yourselves.

Tog_2

Heres an update:

Got it today, had it configured (after on the phone waiting for a while of course) and am receiving DD5.1 100% ! Yippee!

Best of luck to those of you out there who try to coerce Shaw into swapping you a new 2500 unit :)

I am now a happy camper with Shaw (finally) :)

Tog_2

I have been in contact with one particular Shaw rep for over a week and a half now. The 1st line I was told was how the DCT2000 wouldn't support DD5.1 (yeah that's real new) but that the new DCT2500 would - so I played along and said great, how do we do the upgrade at which point he hesitated. He told me there was a meeting at corporate earlier that week and the mucky mucks would be discussing this as an issue. He said he would call someone and get back to me.

He did get back - but not with any answers - I'm a little used to that just like everyone else here :roll: But he did apologize and said he'd have to email someone and that he should receive a reply in a day or 2.

Well 2 days and the weekend went by so I called. I was told I was not forgotten about but that there was no reply yet. I asked what I could expect and he told me that there was talk of upgrading the software on the DCT2000HT but there was no date set. He stated they usually do not give out dates but if it was in the near future he'd let me know about it, _however_ if not then we would look at swapping the DCT2000 - however only one would be swapped (I have 2). I asked him what the latest date I could expect to hear back from him and he said no later than the end of the week. Now this sort of got me excited because I know that these sorts of questions rarely get answered that quickly (I don't know exactly why, but a work week is simply too short of a period of time to expect any sort of reply back).

That day comes and no call - so I call. He suggests that if over the weekend nothing new is brought about then we'd exchange the unit. So on Monday when I leave for work I'm going to take my older DCT2000HT with me because I know for sure no news will come down the chain and I'd like to be ready to watch some DD5.1 that evening (wonder if anything will be on).

I had been reluctant in posting this until after the unit had been exchanged for fear that I would jinx the whole thing - but now that other people are finally getting some resolve I can add to it and inspire others to not give up.

It would be nice to see Shaw actually indicate openly that this is a policy and would be upheld for every purhcased DCT2000 HT. It is a real nuisance _knowing_ it is extremely unlikely that any 2 people at Shaw will give you the same story.

I kind of wonder if they are just quietly swapping these for people like us who know what we are talking about and complain alot!! :D I'm the only person I know IRL who knows anything about any of this stuff, although I am by no means an expert.

Something strange, though good, happened tonight with my DCT2500:

I was watching Four Feathers on Movie Central which was not a DD5.1 flick but I did have my receiver in digital mode for better sound quality (my prologic lamp was on which I expected).

When I was done watching that I wanted to browse the non-digital channels for something else to watch but my receiver remote was on the other side of the room so instead of flipping it to analog I kept it on digital while I surfed.

Normally when I do this the non-digital channels produce no sound, however, tonight EVERY channel was receiving digital sound.

I have heard from other people on this forum that Shaw was sending a muted digital signal to the analog stations and was wondering if they have decided to turn these signals on.

I grabbed my receiver remote and flicked back and forth between analog and digital and there was a very clear difference between the two. As I indicated before I live in Calgary but was wondering if any other DCT2500 or 5100 users were getting digital sound on all channels? It wouldn't be the first time Shaw quietly did something like this.

One more note, which might be perfectly obvious to some, I watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on Movie Central Express tonight. Although the MCE ordering site states this is not a 5.1 flick (though on regular MC it is) when I order the movie it came across as 5.1.

What did Homer Simpson say when he was stealing satellite "How can one little cable bring so much joy?"

This has been, hands down, the best day I have had with my Home Theatre system since I bought my receiver and experienced DTS at home for the first time via DVD.

With the DCT 5100 or DCT 2500, you only need to use the optical digital out for audio. The analogue channels will have PCM 44 kHz audio and the digital channels will have either Dolby digital 2.0 or Dolby digital 5.1
I use the left, right audio out & S video out on my 5100 to go to my VCR line 1 in, the 5100 and 2500 have timers in them, the box will turn on to the channel you want for how long you pick then turn off.

winter_crow

I don't know about the DCT2500, but the 5100 internally converts the analog audio on analog channels to digital so that there will always be a valid digital audio output signal even for the analog channels. As for the contrary, for digital channels the digital audio signal is converted to analog. Thus there will always be valid analog and digital audio outputs from the 5100. I would assume the DCT2500 does the same.

The reports from the early buyers of the 5100 in Calgary and Vancouver confirmed this behaviour.

Thanks for the replies! :D

well this is the first time replying. I to have been dissappointed with my DCT 2000. Today i call shaw and spoke with them. It told them that I was very Dissapointed with my dct and would like them to swap with the dct 2500. The lady from Shaw told me she knew nothing about a dct 2500, but put me on hold to check it out. She came back on and told be that i could Buy one but could not SWAP it. I told her that i bought mine 2 years ago and was PROMISED DD 5.1. Put Me On hold again. She came back and said that she could now Swap it. Free of charge. I pick it up tommorrow. Ill be pissed if their is none.

winter_crow

I don't know about the DCT2500, but the 5100 internally converts the analog audio on analog channels to digital so that there will always be a valid digital audio output signal even for the analog channels. As for the contrary, for digital channels the digital audio signal is converted to analog. Thus there will always be valid analog and digital audio outputs from the 5100. I would assume the DCT2500 does the same.

The reports from the early buyers of the 5100 in Calgary and Vancouver confirmed this behaviour.

Ok, some missing information - the Shaw guy called back yesterday my wife only now remembered to tell me.

He talked to Paul and Paul says there is a problem in the head end and that they can't do anything about it until Monday.

Alan, can you confim that you are receiving and decoding DD5.1 signals in the Kelowna area? If there is a problem in the head end, I would expect it to affect you too then.

well this is the first time replying. I to have been dissappointed with my DCT 2000. Today i call shaw and spoke with them. It told them that I was very Dissapointed with my dct and would like them to swap with the dct 2500. The lady from Shaw told me she knew nothing about a dct 2500, but put me on hold to check it out. She came back on and told be that i could Buy one but could not SWAP it. I told her that i bought mine 2 years ago and was PROMISED DD 5.1. Put Me On hold again. She came back and said that she could now Swap it. Free of charge. I pick it up tommorrow. Ill be pissed if their is none.

Where are you located recycleman02?

Has anyone been able to get the "DVD Like" controls enabled on the DCT2500 by remote. By this I mean fastforward, rewind and pause for VoD (or if you must SoD).

I can still control these from my computer but with my DCT2000 I could control them from my Shaw remote.

I called CS and was told that the DCT2500 cannot do these things. Anyone experienced otherwise?

Has anyone been able to get the "DVD Like" controls enabled on the DCT2500 by remote. By this I mean fastforward, rewind and pause for VoD (or if you must SoD).

I can still control these from my computer but with my DCT2000 I could control them from my Shaw remote.

I called CS and was told that the DCT2500 cannot do these things. Anyone experienced otherwise?

Sorry that I can't confirm or deny - VOD/MCE are not available in my particular backwater yet. :roll:

Toru

I only have a DCT2000 so I don't know whether Digital Dolby 5.1 is available in Kelowna.

Poopie D, who is in Kelowna, had a DCT5100 for awhile. He posted about his experience but the comments were related only to the poor video quality on analog TV channels. I never enquired whether he got Dolby Digital or even tried. If Poopie D is still around maybe he can comment.

Where are you located recycleman02?[/quote]

Edmonton. And i did pick up the dct 2500 with no problems. No questions asked. I even got the Programming credits that are in the box.

Where are you located recycleman02?

Edmonton. And i did pick up the dct 2500 with no problems. No questions asked. I even got the Programming credits that are in the box.

Yeah, the tech also left us with the two PPV coupons. Eh, not that I use PPV anyway.