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Shaw Direct 630 Official Problems / Issues / Resolutions Thread. Read posts 1, 2

418K views 1K replies 234 participants last post by  RuralRouter 
#1 ·
We have a thread on the owner experiences and several people mentioned they'd like to see an "issues" thread. Here it is.

Please try to limit discussion to "real" issues and possible resolutions, workarounds, etc.

Try not to post "I tried to record and it wouldn't. After a reboot, it recorded OK" since that's pretty self-evident.
 
#1,199 ·
630 slow death

Tonight we went to watch some of our PVR recordings on our 630
And got the PVR message you have no recordings.
Did a soft reset and still no PVR recordings,did a system check and see there is a hard drive failure message.
I unplugged the power for a while and then restarted the 630 and all the PVR recordings were back.
After watching regular sat programming for a while the 630 started to reboot and programming has not returned ,just endless reboots.
I'll leave it unplugged for the night and try again tomorrow.
 
#1,200 ·
The slow death is exactly what happened to my 630. I called to cancel my subscription and two weeks before the final month extension it lost all recordings, got it reset and a couple of days later just went into constant reboots and never stopped. All it would do was reboot every 6 minutes. Was wondering if Shaw had sent a signal to it because of my cancellation. :) I'm no longer with Shaw and it is now useless to me. Had the new lnb installed last fall and an external hard drive 18 months ago.
 
#1,201 ·
I have not phoned shaw yet as I'm thinking of cancelling it,
Paying 85 bucks a month to watch a hand full of channels is crazy.
We have only been watching History,HGTV,PBS and Knowledge Network lately.
I should be able to get a free replacement from Shaw,but do I really want to.
We get free over the air HD locals and subscribe to Netflix.
 
#1,202 ·
Romany,

You may want to get your 630 replaced before you give SD your cancellation notice.

If the 630 gives up the ghost after you cancel the unit is a boat anchor for sure. A working replacement unit can be sold for a few bucks.

After you cancel, a working 630 would still be able to receive Knowledge in standard def.
 
#1,205 ·
Already set up? That's new! So you just plugged it in and it was already activated and aligned with your account?

Im not sure if I like that idea or not- being shipped with accounts active- is that safe? But I do like the idea of not having to call in and activate.

Maybe you should check, just to see if it is activated under the previous owners- which would suggest the refurb process is flawed.
 
#1,206 · (Edited by Moderator)
There was a green document sitting atop of the receiver that said that it was already activated to my account and I just needed to connect it up and it would be good to go.
It turned out that they were right,it had just the channels that I am subscribed too.
It came signature required via Purolator ,I feel the shipping is very secure using Purolator or Canada Post signature required.
I have bought a lot of things on line over the years and never had any problems with Canada Post or Purolator.
There was also a prepaid sticker to send back my old 630 in the same box.
 
#1,208 ·
Same experience and same level of satisfaction (+++).

I have other things to do than wait on some automated system's hold. One step up in customer service is the guaranteed callback, the next one is this.

Probably takes all of 5 seconds for tech to flash the ROM before shipping. Keeps the installation "honest" as far as they are concerned.

If the replacement is stolen/diverted/never received, it's easy for them to put a permanent kabosh on it.

Virgin receiver now has to deal with different channel maps for different sat availability, etc. Count on wasting half an hour even if you know your stuff.
 
#1,207 ·
Self booting & loss of remote control 2 year + HD630

2 reboots on its own about 5 minutes apart while watching a single channel - Once back up on its own the remote control will not do anything Same thing happened 2days ago Unit is cool & well ventilated signal strength 90+ Will check tech service tomorrow:confused: (sunday?) & report
I got control back by doing a power off reboot
 
#1,209 ·
Are the new boxes branded Arris or Motorola? I'm presuming Arris now-a-days. Also, I think the pre-activation is a great idea. Will all new boxes come this way (rather than just replacements?). I ask because Shaw Cable have a nifty "activate online" feature for their boxes, and I always wondered if Shaw Direct would follow. If they are pre-activating all boxes, then this means that they won't (because what would be the point?).
 
#1,215 ·
After I had a disk error message I had to unplug the power cable (and wait 30 seconds before re-connecting) to get the hard drive to be recognized as available. After this I had what appeared to me to be very slow channel changes, 7-8 seconds.

Factory resets and drive formats did not restore normal channel changing, the 630 worked okay but was very slow to changes channels or schedule a recording.

I replaced the hard drive with a 256G SSD and it works much better now. Channel changes are 2-3 seconds and scheduling a recording or even just starting the playback of an existing recording is much quicker than ever before.
 
#1,217 ·
I did consider that use in a PVR would cause the SSD to have a relatively short life due to the constant writing of the video data stream.

The improvement I am seeing in the speed of several functions of the 630 has proven to be addictive. I had originally intended to use the SSD as a temporary replacement until the 1TB hard drive I ordered arrived, but now I am just going to leave the SSD in.
 
#1,223 ·
Maybe there is some hope for a SSD (solid state drive) to be used as PVR recording media.

An excerpt from an article called "Endurance Experiment Writes One Petabyte To Six Consumer SSDs"

"The SSD Endurance Experiment previously covered on Slashdot has reached another big milestone: two freaking petabytes of writes."

Source:
Endurance Experiment Writes One Petabyte To Six Consumer SSDs - Slashdot
 
#1,225 ·
The SSD I used to replace a failing hard drive in my 630 is working well. I haven't had any problems since putting it in.

As my HD was degrading any function requiring HD access was getting slower and slower. Changing channels, scheduling a program, deleting a recording or starting a playback are all noticeably faster with the SSD.

I have no intention of going back to a hard drive.
 
#1,227 ·
You will have to contact Shaw at some point to activate the receiver, programming and make sure you have the right channel maps. What do you mean you have channel data but no video and sound? You get the programming guide but no tv channels are showing up? There are a few free channels... 094/392, 299, 741.
 
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