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How satisfied are you with the Pace Tahoe 775HD PVR?

  • Very Satisfied

    Votes: 42 28.6%
  • Somewhat Satisfied

    Votes: 52 35.4%
  • Somewhat Dissatisfied

    Votes: 24 16.3%
  • Very Dissatisfied

    Votes: 29 19.7%

Pace Tahoe (775D) HDPVR owners' thread

248K views 684 replies 150 participants last post by  Ppaatt 
#1 · (Edited)
The word from a member is that the Pace Tahoe 775D launched today to a limited roll out of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, & Ontario. The intro price is $448 until May 31st and that next month non-all digital markets in AB and BC should get the Pace terminals in stock.

If you bought one of these units, please use this thread to give us your feedback here and discuss any issues or pleasant surprises.


To discuss this unit or any other "rumoured" Shaw digital boxes please post in the Rumour: New Shaw Digital Set Top Box and firmware

BTW, to activate an external drive:
  • Power off the Pace (unplug it as pressing power puts it in a standby mode).
  • Leave it unplugged for about 1 minute then plug in your external eSATA drive.
  • It should ask you to format the drive once it is recognized.

Edit by 57: Please see the following thread for adding an SATA External HDD.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=85012


Please note this discussion is for owners only. All others please post in the thread above.
 
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#99 ·
My PACE is about 3 weeks old and the HDD has never gone into sleep/stand-by mode, ever. This drive continues to spin even when the settings are set to spin down the drive.

I am also still seeing that when I switch between the digital/analog channels (not HD) my audio will drop for 1 sec only when switching channels.
Example, turn 36 to 37 (or another channel, except HD) and the audio is there when you first turn it, then it drops for a second then back and no problems on that channel after that.

However, it is doing that no matter what analog/digital channel I turn to.
 
#101 ·
2nd Dead Pace Tahoes.....

The Shaw CSR that grabbed me @ the Home Expressions show in Wpg three weeks ago Guaranteed that I wouldn't be disappointed - He made a good case, the price was right and I was in the market for a PVR anyways so I bit and signed up for the Pace HDPVR

Three Days later, they arrive and install my new toy. Its freaking loud, but Everything works quite well and for the remainder of the evening I enjoy my re-found fondness for TV. Still, admittedly put off at the very audible HDD or cooling fan noise emanating from the unit. The next day, I come home from work, excited to check out what the PVR was able to capture during the day. As I entered the house I could hear what I consider are the tell tale signs of a dying HDD. I turn on the unit, everything is fine except the very loud clicking from the unit. I press the "List" button and the error message on the TV screen reads that the DVR services are either temporarily unavailable, or disabled. Call tech support.

I call Shaw, We attempt to boot the machine, he sends the reset command and boom! I get nothing. Blue bars appear on the LCD display, then a "0" to which I'm told it means its downloading. Well 2 hours go by, and still ZERO. We attempt to boot and reset it again to no avail. Service appointment scheduled.

Three days later, the new box gets dropped off, setup and initiallized. All is good, I go about re setting all my scheduled recordings into my new unit. I'm happy again to be re-acquainted to TV. This new unit still hums rather loud, but it seems to be a happy hum, so I figure I'll just get used to it. Later on in the evening, I'm switching between recorded and live shows, and the unit freezes right up. I boot it, and it comes back online with no other symptoms or issues. All is good.

Not two Weeks later (last night), the wife phones me up and says "I was just finishing up watching a recording, it got to the end and when I press list to see what else to watch it just said TBA" I had her leave it until I got home and took a look. I arrive, take a look, it will not display the Guide, or the contents of my now 85% full drive. I give it a quick reboot, and lose ALL functionality of the STB. I call Shaw up once again; This time around the CSR was unable to send the reset command to my unit - so after some frustration on both our ends, we yet AGAIN schedule another service call.

Needless to say I'm more then a little bit upset this time around - as A) its nice that SHAW has great customer service, and they're very prompt with their service work, but its terribly inconvenient to sit around waiting for a Shaw guy to show up, and seemingly know less about the product that they're selling then I've picked up in 15 minutes reading this forum, and B) I've got a HDD 85% full at the moment, with content that I, and the wife fully intended to see. Honestly I couldn't give a rats ass about most of the tripe on TV, but the better half does - and she's been stuck working nights, so her prime time TV watching has been put on hiatus. This makes her unhappy, which in turn become an annoyance for me - I'm sure we all know the cycle.

So, Mr. Shaw CSR from the Home Expressions show, if I ever see you on the street, I'm going to kick you in the balls, and I guarantee you it will hurt. Thats a guarantee that I will keep, Because since I've met you - I've been disappointed.


Lindend> Any comments / questions? I'm losing faith in the product, and sadly as its new hardware around these parts the CSR's that I'm encountering, truly don't' know how to help....

:eek:

Richard
 
#103 ·
Richard,

Lindend> Any comments / questions? I'm losing faith in the product, and sadly as its new hardware around these parts the CSR's that I'm encountering, truly don't' know how to help....
Can you please go into diagnostics and let me know what you see on the DVR and HDD status pages?

From how you describe it, the first box sounded like it had a bad/dying HDD. The second box sounds like it could be salvaged depending on what you report. Hopefully, we can provide some general principles/investigation techniques that can help people in diagnosing and working around these type of issues.
 
#102 ·
I cannot top the comments made by zerofighter so I will move on to another nugget I found out yesterday. The Shaw ATLAS PVR remote control which appeared to be the same as previous ones, appears to have a quirk that I was not familiar with. For the past few days my function buttons (CBL, TV, AUD etc) have been blinking three times time I press the key or turn up the sound or do anything really. I called the techies at SHAW and advised that the Pace was freezing. The Tech hit the box to reboot, and then said he would check with a colleague to see if he was aware of the problem with the remote. He came back on the line and advised that his associate was aware of this problem as it happened to him. It seems that the blinking three times is to signal low battery. I am not aware that this happened with the Motorola, but once I changed the batteries the problem was solved.
 
#104 ·
Newbie help needed with "future" PVR recordings

Hi!

I picked up one of these Pace Tahoe boxes two weeks ago and haven't been able to get a scheduled PVR recording to work.

If I schedule a program to record and turn the box off, it turns itself on at the right time, runs for the hour that I've scheduled for the recording and then turns itself off. If I then turn the unit back on and look at "My Recordings" there's nothing there. I had a Shaw technician come onsite and we tested things out by recording a show live - i.e. not prgrammed in advance. After letting it run for 10 minutes, we stopped the recording and it showed up in the "My Recordings" so I thought the problem was just a "Newbie User Error". After he left, I set it up to record two back-to-back programs one hour into the future and turned the unit off. After waiting until after the end of the second program, I looked again at "My Recordings." The original recording shows up but the two new ones don't.

When the recordings are supposedly happening, I can hear the disk head movement so it seems as though it's recording something, but I still haven't figured out how to make this thing put an entry into "My Recordings." Also the used disk space doesn't change so it's as if the recording never happened. As I'm typing this, I've setup a future recording but have left the unit powered up in case this works. I'd rather not do that as a rule since standby mode should use less power but if I have to I will. I'm not trying to record a PPV or VOD program - just an HD program on Discovery HD.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

TIA
 
#105 ·
How do you turn the HDD off? It makes a grinding noise that can be heard constantly during quiet movies. It does the same thng in sleep mode or not in sleep mode. Sleep mode changes nothing and I can't find out what sleep mode is in the manual. The HDD can be heard and felt at all times. It pulses and grinds except when the PVR is turned off but then I can't watch TV.

At least there is no fan noise. It's running at 100-102F.
 
#106 ·
Maybe I will count myself as one of the lucky ones. My Pace has worked like a charm since I plugged it in. It is very quiet (and I am pretty anal about these things... my Xbox 360 is annoyingly loud.. the Pace is not). Adding a SATA drive worked fine. It has never reset itself.

The only thing (although this happened with my Moto PVR as well) is that on some high def programming i will have small sections where it almost seems as if the signal cant be decoded fast enough. Last weeks HD basketball game, which with 2OT went over 3 hours. There were a few sections where the sound would dropout, and the picture would be choppy for 10 to 15sec bursts. But over the course of the 3 hour game, it hardly happened at all. This could be the hard drive not being fast enough, or perhaps the unit not being able to decode fast enough. Possibly the signal itself was flawed. Lindend, any thoughts on this observation?
 
#107 ·
Last weeks HD basketball game, which with 2OT went over 3 hours. There were a few sections where the sound would dropout, and the picture would be choppy for 10 to 15sec bursts. But over the course of the 3 hour game, it hardly happened at all. This could be the hard drive not being fast enough, or perhaps the unit not being able to decode fast enough. Possibly the signal itself was flawed. Lindend, any thoughts on this observation?
audio drops have been a recorded issue for Shaw customers talked to my buddy at shaw this morning and he stated many of the audio drops have been due to the Studios using Audio encoders not set properly to be broadcasted using 8psk modulation that the uplink carries use to send the signal to cable/satellite MO's

I notice CBCHD is the worst during live games I am also miffed they wont bring their HD cameras out west here for Hockey the picture is just upscaled 480i into 480p
 
#108 ·
to clarify, I am aware of the regular audio dropouts. The situation I am describing was more to do with the box seeming to not be able to decode quick enough (or hard drive not fast enough)... the audio dropouts were in conjunction with the blotch video signal that was not smooth... it would be what I would expect if I was say playing an intunes video on my computer, while the HD was bogged down doing another high CPU intensive task
 
#109 ·
...sound would dropout, and the picture would be choppy for 10 to 15sec bursts
This can often be attributed to an uplink or downlink to satellite issue, if the weather is bad at either point. This was true recently and could have been the source of this issue.

This happened several times the past winter with PBS Buffalo due to severe snowstorms there. In order to confirm, one should know where the uplink and downlink are located and what the weather was at the time. With PBS Buffalo it was pretty easy to confirm and the next time the programme aired (PBS has lots of repeats) the issue was not there, or it was at a different time in the programme, if the weather was still bad.
 
#110 ·
This can often be attributed to an uplink or downlink to satellite issue, if the weather is bad at either point. This was true recently and could have been the source of this issue.

This happened several times the past winter with PBS Buffalo due to severe snowstorms there. In order to confirm, one should know where the uplink and downlink are located and what the weather was at the time. With PBS it was pretty easy to confirm and the next time the programme aired (PBS has lots of repeats) the issue was not there, or it was at a different time in the programme, if the weather was still bad.
very good point 57 ! that is the issue with live HD broadcasts HD needs a stronger signal strength to stay clear video is the more noteable part of broadcasting to drop first unless the signal is muxed together (audio/video) in a single stream which is most often the case
 
#111 ·
I bought five of the Pace boxes at the Winnipeg Home show. Two have had HD failures, one has a never leaving "message" indicator and all five are louder than a Commodore 1541 floppy drive!!!!

Now I understand the $448 price ($224 at the home show)!! The Motorola boxes, though FAR from perfect have been far better (for me four of the 6412 Phase III).

Every tech that I have dealt with start their talk with "another Pace box? Yea, we have had a lot of problems with them and mainly with the Hard Drives".

Guess I will sell off the Paces before Shaw starts dragging their heels on fixing them. Yes I know the will ding pace for them, but even now the techs at Shaw dislike coming out on calls. They just end up swapping the box, which my last onsite guy said "...we should just have the customer stop by a Shaw office and swap out the box instead of doing a useless onsite visit!".

Owning five, and regretting it!!!!
 
#114 ·
one has a never leaving "message" indicator
the turn message notice off option in the guide does disable the light for the Pace boxes which can help

my buddy's Pace box at his office is quiet as per him actually quieter than the moto box he has at home (as per him)

to disable press menu twice then enter setup then then guide setup scroll down to Message Notice turn it to OFF

once you exit the IPG the message light on the front should go out and the envelope icon in the guide should also be gone

my buddy says they know about this and is being worked on looks to be a firmware issue.
 
#115 ·
Yesterday my Pace box was slow to respond to the remote - even the schedule seemed to be drawn on screen slowly. Eventually the box stopped responding to the remote so I had to turn off the box and start it up again. Seems ok now - very strange though. Could it be because the drive was around 95% full?
 
#116 ·
Box #3

Well Shaw came and dropped off my Third Pace box in less then three weeks.

I don't even care to record anything with it, as I'm more then expecting it to die just about the same time as I want to watch something that I had previously recorded.

The shaw tech had a good idea as far a safeguard to not lose the contents of my drive this time "Watch it while its taping, then you won't miss a thing" :rolleyes:

If this one dies; I'm going to promptly sell the 4th box, and upgrade my current FTA setup.

Hell I've had "Death Stars" last longer then these units :eek:
 
#120 ·
This is a well-known bug with the Motorola boxes. Deleting a recording usually restores the hard drive space. What I do is record 4 or 5 SD digital channels for just a few seconds each and then delete one when I get the 100% full bug. In your case I would phone Shaw and see what they can do. Or just try unplugging your 775D from power for a minute or two.
 
#122 ·
This is a well-known bug with the Motorola boxes. ....Or just try unplugging your 775D from power for a minute or two.
This particular bug is actually a TV Guide issue (a.k.a. the false disk full bug). The reason you can encounter it on both Pace and Motorola boxes is the EPG software is the same for both platforms.

Normally (99+% of the time), once you run into this bug, the only way to recover is a reboot.
 
#137 ·
Motorola.
There are multiple variables here that could explain the different behavior.

1. The Pace boxes are running a newer version of TV Guide (with some TV Guide bug fixes in this area).

2. There may be some Motorola specific behavior that causes temporary false disk full messages to appear (I can't comment on these).

What I can definitively talk about is recovery procedures if/when the false disk full happens on a Pace box. Yes, there are circumstances where it might be eliminated by deleting a recording. But he vast majority of the times will require a reboot to get TV Guide out of this state.
 
#140 ·
There are multiple variables here that could explain the different behavior.

1. The Pace boxes are running a newer version of TV Guide (with some TV Guide bug fixes in this area).

2. There may be some Motorola specific behavior that causes temporary false disk full messages to appear (I can't comment on these).

What I can definitively talk about is recovery procedures if/when the false disk full happens on a Pace box. Yes, there are circumstances where it might be eliminated by deleting a recording. But he vast majority of the times will require a reboot to get TV Guide out of this state.
So you have to unplug it from the wall to reboot it? Will this bug be corrected soon? It would be annoying if you wanted to record something, you get the false disk full message, and you have to pull the plug (losing the guide info) and wait for the guide to reload to start the recording.
 
#123 ·
agreed with lindend

i have seen this on my old 6412 III and my new 3416 only once in a while two ways to fix

delete a single recording or 2. power cycle the STB

it is certainly not a firmware issue if happening on Pace boxes since the firware is different for different hardware and Pace and Motorola are NOT the Same

I saw the Pace box today I love the looks and the LED much nicer and having LED's for what tuner 1/2 and which tuner is recording is very nice but the best part is the active SATA port i cannot wait till they are here in Calgary !!! I will buy one or two !!!!!

I heard the Hard Drive very very quiet asked buddy how long hes had it there he said about month before they were released to familiarize his team with it

so if noisey drives are out there then perhaps some bad drives shipped out but my buddy loves the Pace over the Moto box he will give me as much notice as possible as to when they are coming out in Calgary/Vancouver/Edmonton
 
#124 ·
lindend - I am wondering if you can forward suggestions for future firmware updates for the pace box?

Suggestion 1 - It would be great to have a user setting that would allow you to not have the "fast forward dialogue" pop up when you are fast forwarding (or rewinding etc). When I am watching a basketball game for example, and I want to fast forward parts, it would be cool if I could press FF, but not have the annoying ugly bar pop up where i have to press exit to get rid of it... just leave the screen pristine.

Suggestion 2 - It would be great if there was a way to check what channel the tuner is currently recording on. Lets say I have timers set to tape two different events. A basketball game is taping on one tuner, and Lost is taping on the other tuner. Also assume that I do not know what tuner each is on (i.e. I dont know if basketball is on tuner 1 or tuner 2) because I was not home when I started recording. Now I want to turn the TV on, but I do not want to accidentally have it turn on and be selected to the tuner the bball game is one, becuase I do not want to ruin the score. But one tuner displays "Rec", and if I press swap, the other tuner displays "Rec". So I dont know which tuner I want to swap to to avoid my bball game. It would be cool if there was a way that you could check which channel the currently chosen tuner is recording. For example if it alternated between displaying "Rec" and "Channel", or, if you pressed a button, it would show the current channel being recorded. I know this sounds esoteric, but I am always taping sports, and its always a challenge not to accidentally turn the tv on and spoil the game. My current approach is that I press list, scroll down a bunch and press play (with the idea being that it will play some random show, then i can turn the tv on and choose what i want to watch from the list, without seeing the currently recorded program in the preview window)... but if there were a way to tell which channel the tuner is recording, that would be even better. Hope this makes sense.
 
#127 ·
lindend - I am wondering if you can forward suggestions for future firmware updates for the pace box?
I'm a software architect for the firmware in our products, so yes, I can forward your requests to the right people. ;) We listen closely to our customers and have a track record of incorporating user suggestions into our products.

There is one caveat however. If the feature request is in areas controlled by the TV Guide software, we won't be able to implement them. The best way to improve that area of the software is to inform Shaw and Shaw can then relay it to TV Guide.

In this particular case, both of your requests are TV Guide related, so sorry, we're unable to make those changes.
 
#125 ·
For suggestion 2, what I do is put my arm in front of my eyes to block most of the screen as I turn the TV on--I can tell which channel is on by looking at the edges (especially the bottom where there is no score). Then if I'm on the wrong tuner I just flip over to the other tuner.
 
#134 ·
My HDD finally spun down..I think.....

Fired my Pace unit up at lunch time to see if we were getting EAHD(no go) at lunchtime and the front panel had the animation that Lindend was talking about.
Blue dashes going around in a square shape. I wish I would have paid attention before I turned it on cause I didn't notice if it was quieter or not.
I'm assuming it did spin down cause I could only rewind it to the spot where I turned the unit on.
Giddy with excitement(time to get a life) I went into the diagnostic screens, went to 23, the HDD part and it says number of spin downs zero.
Yet it says current/max temperature 77/104. Usually the current temp says from 100 to 104, somewhere in that range.
If current temperature said 77 at the time you would think the HDD had definitely spun down?
Have now told my better half I want to be there whenever she turns it on to monitor situation, she thinks I'm loony.
Lindend, or anybody, am I correct? Did it spin down?
Thanks in advance.
 
#136 ·
I'm assuming it did spin down cause I could only rewind it to the spot where I turned the unit on.
I'm afraid not. This is just how TV Guide works. If you go into standby, it will stop recording.

Giddy with excitement(time to get a life) I went into the diagnostic screens, went to 23, the HDD part and it says number of spin downs zero.
That particular spin down field is spin downs due to the drive overheating. In this case, its good that the count is 0! ;)

What you want to do is go to the main DVR diags page and see the standby spin down count.

If current temperature said 77 at the time you would think the HDD had definitely spun down?
Don't think you can safely infer that.
 
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