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Shaw Direct HDPVR 630 Owners Discussion Thread

1M views 3K replies 469 participants last post by  gzink 
#1 ·
This discussion thread is for owners to discuss the new Shaw Direct HDPVR 630 when it becomes available on September 1st.

Please post your thoughts and your feedback on this unit once you have it up and running.


For non-owners, you can ask questions about the unit in our New 630 In Pre Order


Edit by 57: Here's a thread summarizing problems, issues, resolutions, workarounds:

Shaw Direct 630 Official Problems / Issues / Resolutions Thread. Read posts 1, 2 - Canadian TV, Computing and Home Theatre Forums
 
#3,057 ·
I live down south, otherwise I'd probably call Shaw on this.

I took a phone call, paused my DSR 630 and left the room. When I returned there was no picture and a blank display on the 630. So, I did a reboot (held down power button.) Seemed normal, until... Sequence was the lower segment of the number LEDs for a short time, then the middle segments, then nothing. I waited a while and still no video or what I would expect next on the display (StRt). I can tell the receiver can get remote signal as when I select the power button I see two quick flashes of a period (.), which looks normal. When none of this worked I unplugged the receiver for five minutes, plugged it in and had the same result.

I listened close to the receiver and can hear the hard drive being accessed when I restart the unit (which makes sense to me), but I've had failed hard drives in computers act the same (like it gets part way through and then experiences a bad sector while loading the OS.) Sadly, the only way I could test that theory on my own would be to replace the hard drive, losing all programs I have recorded (sigh.)

Has anyone else seen something like this? Is there a guide to what the segment LEDs mean prior to the StRt display?

One last thing, I have another 630 in the house which worked fine through this whole time. I did a soft reset (power button) and watched the boot sequence. It worked as always.

I'm hoping someone can help. If not I can contact the folks I bought it from, but they aren't open until Monday morning. (It's Friday now.) My uneducated guess, without knowing the LED diagnostics would be to either swap out the hard drive or upgrade to an 830.

Thanks for any help you can give me.
 
#3,058 ·
You correctly mentioned your southern options of buying a new 830 from your southern dealer or installing a new internal drive into the 630. Depending on the Canadian "connections" of your dealer and his technical competence you might want to go either way. I think that I would choose the new 830, but either way is OK.
 
#3,059 ·
Follow up to my post of 29 May.

Strange events. I'm now running a 630 which had been in my bedroom as my primary receiver. So, I connected my "bad" 630 in the bedroom to see what would happen. It appeared to have the same problem as before, and it had not "booted up" when I went to sleep. But, when I woke up in the morning it was up and running like normal. I tried a reboot to see if it was indeed operating like normal (ok, I'm stupid). It had the same result - the boot sequence took a number of hours. I still think there's probably a hard drive problem, but at least I have a way of watching the recordings I hadn't watched before (for now).

My guess is it will fully fail in the near future. The only solution would probably be a hard drive replacement, but then I'd still have a ten (or more) year old receiver. At this point I'm thinking of replacing it with an 830. Are there any flaws in my thinking? (I'm assuming the 830 has all the kinks worked out by now.)

Thanks.
 
#3,067 ·
Converters

That is an interesting article. Also interesting are all the other converters that are featured at the bottom of the Wiki. I like to know that there seems to be a converter for almost any situation, Even the oldest piece of equipment one finds in the attic or basement can be joined to almost anything modern.
 
#3,068 ·
I've been trying to find the answer before posting because I'm pretty sure I read about this over the years... I think the HD on my 630 is going out so I want to reformat it, and replace it if that doesn't work. What is the procedure to reformat the hard drive? I seem to recall a hidden remote sequence.
 
#3,073 ·
A couple months ago I posted about my 630 being on its last legs. Well... I can only say that it died peacefully, and had a good life, but alas it is no more.

I went ahead and bought an 830. I have a couple of questions that I hope someone here can answer. The 830 got the new channel map, which included all the channels I'm subscribed to on both satellites. After editing my channel list to not show the G1 channels they still come up when I search for a program to record. Is there any way I can do a smart record without including the hidden channels? This could be a real problem otherwise.

My second question has to do with the indicator light on the front panel. I figured it would only indicate "on" or "off". But mine is blinking. I can't find anywhere which tells me what they means. Has anyone here ran into this? If so, what does it mean?

Other wise, given the missing features (clock, RGB, ...) that I'll miss from my 630, I have to say the 830 is working as expected.

Thanks.
 
#3,077 ·
A huge thunder blast hit our house. It scared the heck out us. A barn 1 mile away was struck and burned - no animals were in the barn at the time. Surprisingly, our TV set reset itself and came back – whew. The 630 died. I had the complete "Good Eats" series and the "Good Eats – Reloaded" recorded, but un-watched. I am really put out that I lost those shows! I hope that 1 TB drive is still OK.

Shaw Direct will send us a refurbished replacement under warranty. I hope they have some 630's left, I would prefer not to receive a refurb 830.
 
#3,078 ·
Channel 245 WGN was missing from the replacement 630 sent to me. 245 WGN was still working on my 600. Swapped satellite cables.

WGN appeared normal on the 600 – the replacementt 630 was now missing more channels.

Shaw had me do all sorts of things and finally scheduled a service call. After stewing a bit, I called Shaw to order a new 830 and to cancel the service call.

I suppose that I will have to call Shaw to authorize the 830 and find that I am no longer subscribed to channels to which I am already subscribed. Always something. That has been the history whenever I got a replacement receiver. After the dust settles, I hope for a long and happy association with the 830 and the mechanical wonder spinning inside.
 
#3,083 ·
Last night we were going to watch The Sounds on 15 minute "tape delay". I was recording on CBC Windsor (the recording was set to All Channels but that's the on it picked). I tuned to the channel and all I got was a black screen (no audio either). I then tuned to CBC Toronto and the show was playing. Back to CBC Windsor and no show. I set up the PVR to record on a different channel next time. Then I went to the PVR and the entire recording was there, apparently recorded on CBC Windsor. I'm very confused.
 
#3,084 ·
We have two 630 PVR's on and right now we are watching the football game on Fox 233. One of the 630's has the game on with picture and the other one has nothing on, no sound or picture. We did a front button reset and it came back for about 10 minutes and then went out again. The other one is still fine. Looking at the Status screen for the one with no picture it shows -2.7 db. The working one shows 8.5 db. My set-up passes through a switch.

Would anyone have any idea what could be causing this?
 
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