Pace Tahoe (775D) HDPVR owners' thread

[Thunder]

JasonB posted "The extension IR receiver that comes in the box was incredibly important. Without this installed, the PVR had a far smaller reception cone than my old Motorola (2000 maybe?). With it installed lying flat on my TV cabinet I can even bounce the IR off the roof and get response. The only reason I didn't install it at first was that there were no instructions and I wasn't sure what to do with it."

I had my two Pacer 775s installed about three weeks ago. I did a post at that time. In addition to the comments made, I too have had sound dropouts on Bones and freezing on Disturbia both watched after recording.

My reason for the post is I have two little cables that are sitting im plastic bags. The tech did not do anything with them and did not tell my wife what they were for. If these are indeed the infra red extenders for the remote - Where do I plug them in? As always thanks for the help.

[jumpy27]

There should be an "IR Receive" on the back of the PVR where you can plug in the little cable. I got this from the owner's manual that I downloaded online.

[digital island]

Yeah the IR receiver helped a lot. I put it up on top of my tv beside my wii sensor bar.
much better.

[Thunder]

Great thanks folks. I got it to work. You're right it is much better. Good thing I didn't throw it out!

[Nyk0n]

Originally Posted by mattygray

I got one of the new Tahoe HD boxes a couple days ago. Activation threw Shaw went smooth and everything seems to be working fine. My only complaint is that the hard drive is quite loud. I can clearly hear it while watching TV, and it is not a constant hum, just a repetitive grinding noise.

I was wondering if anyone else was having similar issues. I saw another member said it was noisy. He also said the fan would not turn off when the box went into standby. But i don't believe it is a fan that he is hearing, that is the hard drive, it is always on, it is loud, and there is no way to turn it off.

You may want to enable the HDD standby mode by powering the Pace off and pressing menu its an option in the menu that pops up also may want to perform a scandisk or defrag or format in case there is some fragmentation or bad sectors causing the nosie to do this power the pace box off and very quickly press the enter button (easier to do on the front of the box instead of the remote)

this will bring you into diagnostics to defrag and scandisk using the shaw remote press:
replay (to the left of the list button)
list
list
list
live

this brings you to the HDD staus menu with options you would not normally get access to in the HDD status menu

[Takodo]

I am returning this box Monday for a replacement. Watching TV tonight it has turned off and back on 4 times losing the guide each time. On the last reset it will only go up to channel 106.

[SKY]

I'm unable to view some of the HD channels now like TSN. What's going on? I better call Shaw and ask them what the problem is.

[bigscreenbob]

Has anybody in Shaw-land had their HDD spin down yet?
Mine is supposed to but in the 3 or so weeks I've had it nary a spin down even once. If anybody's has I would sure like to know.
Thanks in advance.

[sbrown17]

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.

[Burner103]

Does anyone know if the IR transmit plug is just a pass through, or if it just transmits specific controls?

I wouldn't mind using it to control an A/V receiver that's in a closed cabinet with the DCT if possible.

[zerofighter]

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....



Richard

[Thunder]

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.

[lindend]

Richard,

Originally Posted by zerofighter

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.

[FredBrown]

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

[llcarlos]

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.