Pulling the plug on Shaw Gateway — or thinking about it

[Treebeard]

I am at the end of my rope with the Shaw Gateway. I have had mine for about 8 months and would have thought by now that Shaw would have all of the bugs exterminated.
Here is my list of annoyances that have me experiencing severe buyer's remorse:

• One of my portals takes 3-5 mintues to respond to commands from the remote when it is first woken up.
• The guide occasional goes blank and takes a few seconds to reappear.
• Skip backward and forward sometimes does not work or takes a few seconds to respond.
• The color scheme of the guide makes it very difficult to read.
• The guide does not follow the channel button. If I channel surf with the channel button and press the guide button, the guide does not go to the current channel being viewed.
• The guide does not return to the current time or program if you scroll into the future.
• Inability to show subscribed channels only in the guide.

Is there anybody who is satisfied or close to being satisfied with their Gateway experience?

[CowtownBiomed]

Works fine for me.
-My portals wake up just fine, but sometimes need a channel up or down. Not often.
-I can live with the guide as it is, a few seconds isnt going to kill me.
-Skip forward or back...same as above..
-I have very good eyes.
-So? type in the channel number into the guide and press enter..wha' la'
- No it doesn't and I am glad, I want it to go back to where I was just searching. Holding the back button will take to you the "now" time in a jiffy..
-What? go to set up and REMOVE the channels from the listing that you are not sub'd too...very easy...

[57]

One of my portals takes 3-5 mintues to respond to commands from the remote when it is first woken up.

Make sure it's not the TV that is the source of the issue. See the following post on IR interference and what you can do to fix it:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=64463

[Emvious]

I have a Samsung Plasma, and am getting IR interference with the portal if the room is dark. Still works, but it is not as responsive. I just got the Gateway system last week, and haven't tried to work around it yet.

An easy way to test for this is to put a blanket over the TV and see if the response is better. (You can still generally see the screen through the blanket to see if the portal is responding.)

Other than that, my Gateway and 3 portals that were installed last week have worked very well. No pixelation, dropouts, lost recordings or any other problems. Generally more responsive than the Motorola's, except for the IR interference on one TV.

Very happy with it so far.

[shawsean]

Have you contacted support yet regarding these issues? You can either email us at ecare.help[at]sjrb.ca ATT: Digital Home (with a brief description of the issues you're having) or chat (shaw.ca/chat) and we'd be happy to help get things working properly for you.

Cheers.

[JasonB]

I'm very happy with my Gateway, and in less than a month it has also turned out to have an amazingly high WAF ^1.

The majority of my initial issues were dealt with by disabling the grid guide entirely. Once we got used to the new guide, we actually prefer it. Once we learned the shortcuts, most operations are actually more efficient than on the DCX.

I'm leaving the older PVRs in place and recording for now, but if it wasn't for concerns about all eggs in one basket I'd probably be flipping them now.

I do have a slight IR-based responsiveness issue on one of my installs for about a minute after the TV is turned on, but it's not enough to bother me to the point of repositioning the Portal.

Apart from this, the only real standout issues for me are:

- Occasionally overwhelming the connection by clicking skip too many times in a row.

- The short skip/back timings.

- Shows that I've deleted getting re-recorded (this may be because of poor guide data)

Many of the issues reported here (picture quality, lack of responsiveness, etc) have so far given me a bye.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_acceptance_factor

[Berty]

The guide does not return to the current time or program if you scroll into the future.

Hit the MENU button once or twice when perusing the guide.

[Billie Baroo]

I am also getting near the end with this solution. Going from a stable Satellite PVR to this setup is disappointing. Who ever at Shaw approved this thing clearly did not use a PVR before. This unit is full of bugs that probably will never be fixed. Shaw should just pull the plug on this.

[probc]

Instead of just pulling the plug on the whole thing, they really should just fix it. Clearly the issues are all software related and require pressure on the programming team to get it resolved. The programmers involved either need incentives to fix bugs, or threats involving being replaced by someone who can actually fix the bugs.

With the ability to push out updates via the network there is no reason that every week a new release with bug fixes cant be pushed out. It frustrates me to no end when i hear lame excuses that they (meaning shaw and/or arris) are still testing to make sure it is perfect before releasing. Get over it - it never will be perfect and there will always be problems. The sooner they push out any bug fix the better for every user.

Another direction that should be explored is jailbreaking the unit and start hacking with it so that talented programmers can actually build quality software to run on it. Consider the Apple TV, once jailbroken, great things can be done with that little box (IE: seasonpass, xbmc, icefilms, etc). Most likely the Arris unit would be the same thing. Let's put the request out to the hacker community to get involved purely as a challenge to them to show off their talents.

[raypundo]

I have had mine for a few months now, so far I am happy with it.

I have never had my portal do those things listed. Never had to power cycle the gateway or anything either. If I hit skip 20 times real fast is can slow for a second, I blame the remote operator on that one It is still a vast improvement to my Motorola boxes.

I wish the guide was color codes like the Motorola (purple movies, blue kids, green sports is nice), but I have learned to deal. This is a personal preference thing, so everyone will have varying opinions.

I got the gateway with one portal initally. I will trade in my 3400 and 6416 for portals once we watch the shows off of them. I have 2 whole seasons of Fringe on the one lol.

Overall, I am satisfied with it. It is different for sure, but I would not say in a bad way. I find it to be much for responsive then my Motorola boxes, the interface takes some getting used to for sure, but I am already doing things out of habit with the remote now where I used to have to really think and concentrate onwhat I was doing lol.

[Ric01]

Originally Posted by Treebeard

I am at the end of my rope with the Shaw Gateway. I have had mine for about 8 months and would have thought by now that Shaw would have all of the bugs exterminated.
Here is my list of annoyances that have me experiencing severe buyer's remorse:

• One of my portals takes 3-5 mintues to respond to commands from the remote when it is first woken up.
• The guide occasional goes blank and takes a few seconds to reappear.
• Skip backward and forward sometimes does not work or takes a few seconds to respond.
• The color scheme of the guide makes it very difficult to read.
• The guide does not follow the channel button. If I channel surf with the channel button and press the guide button, the guide does not go to the current channel being viewed.
• The guide does not return to the current time or program if you scroll into the future.
• Inability to show subscribed channels only in the guide.

Is there anybody who is satisfied or close to being satisfied with their Gateway experience?

Treebeard, sorry to hear that the gateway did not work out well for you. May I know what area you are in? I am curious if the signal quality from Shaw nearest network node to your home is affecting the communication between your gateway and the Shaw mother-ship since there are many other happy gateway users as well. I am trying to find out if there is a pattern to this..those who are suffering gateway problems may share a common denominator and I am not sure what that denominator is if any

[Nanuuk]

Happy camper here. My wife has a half dozen 'bugs', but for the most part its been a good experience. And you can't beat the PQ now. Amazing.

[flyte]

Happy camper here too. I have had it since Christmas and both the wife and I love it. Being able to watch any of our recorded shows at anyone of our TVs is a huge plus and that alone was worth upgrading from our 6416.

I do get some lag when we hit the remote frequently (like when hitting the skip button a bunch of times)

Speaking of remotes - I wasn't a huge fan of the original one, so I got a harmony one and love it. Works excellent with the portal.

[shoua]

I am having a lot of issues with mine from very slow response time to the guide blanking out for a few seconds while scrolling up and down and the lack of an exit button on the remote is really annoying. The other problem I have is channels I'll be watching for awhile going black and saying to call Shaw to subscribe, I change the channel and come back and it is fine again. I knew going in that the system had its quirks, but its really driving my wife and myself crazy. She wants to go back to Telus, but we are locked into the Shaw 3 year contract.....I mean rental agreement.

[Jetranger]

Use 'Zoom' or 'Menu'(typically 'Zoom') as an 'exit' and you aren't 'locked' into anything. You have agreed to pay for the equipment over the next three years. If you want to drop Shaw, you will just have to pay the outstanding balance when you do. The equipment is yours to keep or sell, your choice.