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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
 
#2,494 ·
Screen freeze

Encore une fois, j'ai appellé Shaw ce soir. Parlé 40 minutes avec une ''personne'' pour.....jusqu'au prochain appel.
One more time, I called Shaw this evening. Spend 40 minutes with a ''person'' for.....until the next time.
L'écran a gelé. Fait un reboot avec Shaw et c'est revenu correct.
The tv freeze. Do a reboot with Shaw and it's ok.
 
#2,496 ·
USB backup

Davee, just so you know, the USB backup can be taken from any 600 series receiver and used on any other 600 series in anyone's name. You can use your upstairs units backup to set the channels and users for the replacement, then all you would have to change was the remote address.
One backup from any 6XX works on 600, 605, and 630, for others that may have the same issue.
 
#2,497 ·
630 PVR smart record not working

Not sure if this was discussed elsewhere but just recently all my programmed recordings disappeared. I tried to re-enter them using the smart record option but that does not work: it's like nothing happens.

Here is what I do: I go to the Guide, select the program I want to record and then select the Smart Record all new episodes. Normally there would be a scheduling bar that appears at the bottom and the program would be scheduled. A little round disk would appear in the Guide showing that the program would be recorded. Now when I follow these steps, nothing happens and the program is not recorded.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?
 
#2,501 ·
Not sure if this was discussed elsewhere but just recently all my programmed recordings disappeared. I tried to re-enter them using the smart record option but that does not work: it's like nothing happens.

Here is what I do: I go to the Guide, select the program I want to record and then select the Smart Record all new episodes. Normally there would be a scheduling bar that appears at the bottom and the program would be scheduled. A little round disk would appear in the Guide showing that the program would be recorded. Now when I follow these steps, nothing happens and the program is not recorded.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?
To Goalsgo,
Make certain the shows you are trying to record are actually new shows. I've experienced the same thing only to discover that while the show may look new, if its original air date was in the past it will not consider it a new recording. Original air dates normally appear in the info screens pertaining to the shows you are hoping to record.
If this isn't the cause, I agree with GaryE's suggestion but would add that if the drive or drives show a pass, the next step would be to do an A/C Reset. Unplug the PVR from the wall plug and disconnect both coax cables. Wait a few minutes. Plug the power back in and let the unit re-boot. You'll then receive a message about having no signal. Then, reconnect both coax cables. You should then have a picture but the guide will show 'no data' and will take a while to load. Leave it on a subscribed channel until the guide, all 14 days worth fully loads. (If you switch to an unsubscribed channel, the guide load will be interrupted) Then try to reprogram your recordings. Good luck.
 
#2,498 ·
It appears your hard drive has become corrupted or failed.... Hold down the power button on the front of the 630 for about 5 or 6 seconds until it starts to reboot. After everything comes back up go into Options-4-7 and scroll down to Line "S" HDD Health and see if it says Int: Pass or Int: Failed. If it says Pass then try and redo your schedule. If it Failed then call Shaw Direct.
 
#2,502 ·
Programmed Recordings Didn't Record

I currently have 2 PVR630's, both controlled with URC600 remotes. One is 3 months old and the second almost two years. Both have a 2TB external drive attached. Since I have two other older non-pvr receivers, all are connected using a 4 x 8 powered multiswitch provided originally by SD.

I have a few issues to cover here which I'll submit individually.

A few days prior to a 10 day vacation last month, I set up a dozen or so one time recordings to the already daily ones previously set up on both. Upon my return, I discovered both PVR's ceased recording on the day I departed. Nothing recorded, neither the one times nor the daily ones. In addition, the PVR Options screen was blank and the Upcoming screen which should have at least had the daily repeats was blank. SD tech support spent almost an hour or so walking me through various option and diagnostic screens and ultimately had no explanation to offer. All hard drives showed a pass, both internals are almost empty and the fullest external is at 42%. There were no power interruption during this time and even if there were, we've lived through others and the upcoming screen has always remained intact.

Any suggestions?
 
#2,503 ·
PVR 630's Turn Themselves On

Please see my previous post for my configuration details.

A week or so after returning to find nothing recorded, (oh and by the way, both appear to record perfectly now), the older 630, when tuned to channel 60 would broadcast for a minute or so and then suddenly provide the 'lost satellite signal' message. The system status would of course show that tuner's signal at 0 with the other tuner at 95+.
Clear day, no snow or any other obstructions on the dish. SD support had me do a front panel soft reset and then the A/C reset but to no avail although the latter one did restore channel 60 but again, only for a minute or so and then the 'no satellite signal' message again. They then stepped me through a factory reset using the 'preserve' option so I don't lose my hard drive recordings (The subject of a future post). This appeared to fix things but the following day it was doing the same thing. Another call to SD, another factory 'preserve' reset and still the same result. At this point they declare the unit defective and tell me they will replace it, something I refuse to do given this ridiculous situation of having to then lose every recording on my external HD. (again, more on that later)
I then decide to do another A/C reset but this time, disconnecting the coax at the multiswitch. I discover the connectors are slightly loose anyway, probably due to the heat this thing produces. This time I reconnect to the only two remaining ports not previously used, tighten everything up and the 630 in question is back to normal with one exception. It powers itself on.
Since my remotes control both the monitors and receivers, both are set up to power both on and off. Both use separate remote ID's. I'll power everything down only to find that the receiver is back on (green light lit) sometime later that day or the next morning. After performing a few more soft and A/C resets on this unit, the powering on by itself seems to have ceased. Only one problem, now our other 3 month old 630 is doing the same and so far similar measures don't appear to have cured it.
And by the way, I have discovered that tuning to an unsubscribed channel before turning things off, something I used to do religiously to keep the internal and external drive from spinning all the time, keeps the unit off as long as I remember to do so before turning things off..


Again, any suggestions?
 
#2,505 · (Edited)
Goalsgo,
Happy to hear it. Hate to be the pessimist but you can be sure other issues await you down the road. Your 'Needless to say I am speechless and cannot understand what happened there' says it all. It's ok for us owners not to know what happened but entirely unacceptable for SD tech support not to also which has been my experience each and every time I've engaged them. Other than failed hard drives, I also don't see any concrete reasons from SD for problems users have experienced documented in the previous 166 pages of this thread.
It's amazing to think that a single product could generate 167 pages of issues with close to 700,000 views to date. It's obvious SD know that their competitors' offerings are just as crappy, otherwise they would have taken steps long ago to make the 630 or any successors a lot more reliable than what is documented here.
End of Rant!
 
#2,506 · (Edited)
HDPVR 630 firmware update to 46.23

http://www.shawdirect.ca/english/softwareupdate/

Thanks Gary

I never saw there was going to be a firmware update until it showed up
on my 630 on the morning of March 11, 2015.

Thanks for posting the above link.
The Shaw direct web site just runs you around in circles
when you try to locate information about the firmware update.
I would not have found this info. without you posting the link.
 
#2,507 ·
New software

The new software seems to ahve loaded by itself last night and in the process missed the last half of something I was trying to record.

Already found something that is extreemly annoying, I think "features" are designed to annoy customers. This one being when I am watching a show and something starts to record on the second tuner a message pops up on the screen saying the recording has started. Never had it do this before, and I find the message annoying. Any way to prevent this from happening?

I would occasionally get a message if I was watching a channle live and a second recoring was about to start in the past, whihc makes sense as I would soon no longer be able to watch what I was but if I was watching something that had been recorded I never got this message. Suspect it will happen with the new one. This would become evne more annoying if I am trying to make space on the hard drive by makig a DVD or video tape of a recording only to have the message pop up. If it does this means one would now have to check and make sure there are no things scheduled to be recorded while the transfer is being made.

I also have another problem caused by the 630 trying to be too smart. If I record something and for some reason there is a problem with the recording (like 630 reboots in the middle of it, the show starts late because of an earlier sports overrun, there are weather problems causing the signal to drop) the 630 will not let me try to record the same programme again if it is rerun later in the week. It will set up and act like it does but before the show is run it will delete it from the schedule.

A similair thing happens when there are two things on in prime time I want to record and I attempt to set one of them to record from the west coast feed or just a second broadcast later in the night (this way something else can be watched in prime time). It will again act like it will record the later airing and has it in the list but before the event occurs it will decide to record the first broadcast.

In both these instances a manual timer can be set up to get the desired broadcast, but the 630 cant seem to get the porgramme info on something from a manul recording levaing me with a list saying "Manaul recording 156" with the date.

I have gottne used ot this but would like to find a way to get rid of the notice on screen.

I do think that getting more time on the schedule is a nice feature but wold give it back to get rid of the notice.
 
#2,508 ·
I dont like the new popups either.

As for the recordings, the problem is with your priorities. It can only record 2 shows at the same time and its not smart enough to figure out a way to record all the shows if theres more than two scheduled for the same time slot. It will just go thru your list in priority order and when it finds an empty timeslot it schedules the show to tape at that time and moves to the next show on the list.

The best thing you can do to aliviate the problem is to make sure when you set up timers to choose ALL CHANNELS or HD CHANNELS only (never a particular channel) and choose ALL EPISODES instead of NEW.
That way it increases the chances that the show will be available at different timeslots in a different channel or because it doesnt have the flag NEW.
 
#2,509 ·
Is there away to get rid of the pop ups?

Also saw the link and another what could be annying feature of having emergency alerts come up. Hoping these will be infrequent.

as far as my timers go I am not wanting to record 3 things at once I am wanting things to be recorded when I am not awake a 1 AM broadcast of a programme not the 9 PM version, I select that i want the later oen it sets it up then resets it to the earlier one.

It also does not want something to be rerecorded whcih i sometimes need to do if the original recording has problmes of some type, whihc does happen at least once a month.
 
#2,513 ·
I do wish the 630 was smart enough to know if a recording was successful or not and try to record the same show at another time if available. I am thinking of a short power outage or a front panel reset while recording. There is an indication of such event when you see the time bar for the show.
 
#2,515 ·
Married Hard Drives

Yes, those who have recently mentioned that hard drive recordings are not copy-able or transferable to any other device are absolutely correct. Once an external drive is connected to the PVR, it maps (or marries) that drive to that receiver. And if the external drive is larger than the internal one, all recordings will go to the external drive and only revert back to the internal one once the available space on it exceeds the external drive.
If say you add external drive 'A' to your PVR and fill it up, and you want to keep those recordings after you've now added external drive 'B', you can't salvage anything on 'A'. The minute you attach 'B', it marries it to the PVR and essentially divorces 'A'. If you did attempt to reattach 'A', it immediately re-formats it wiping out anything you had on it and by doing so, you've now rendered 'B' useless also from a viewing anything you had on it perspective.

This is why for me I refuse to accept SD's haste in offering to replace my PVR when problems occur. Not only do I lose everything on the hard drive but now I have to settle for a non-new supposedly refurbed PVR.

I submitted a request to SD that they at least make external hard drives swappable so that once 'B' is introduced, 'A' would still be viewable but every rep I dealt with during my dialogue pulled out the classic 'it would violate copyright infringement laws', reminding me of just how many government agencies hide behind the privacy law even when the info in question is in the public domain, but I digress.

No matter how hard they tried to explain, I fail to see how this would be a violation. If the so called copyrighted info on the external drive (or internal for that matter) cannot be copied, how would using external drives to archive recordings (or re-attach to a replacement PVR) violate any laws? Yes, I suppose I could loan my drive to another 630 owner but so what, they could have just as easily recorded the same material but didn't.

I suppose my mistake is in regarding the hard drives relating to the 630 in the same way as a DVD recorder, VCR, Casette Recorder, Memory Stick, PC external drive and anything similar. All of these and more can hold copyrighted material but more importantly, all be copied from which arguably may be a violation, but as long as material on PVR 630 drives cannot be copied, why do they need to be erased the minute you try and reconnect 'A' after the presence of 'B' or to a new receiver?

Because I initially viewed the external drive as something to keep valuable recordings on, I now have a few years worth of material that I'd like to preserve since it will never be available again. Since I can no longer consider this material as anything other than temporary, I would be interested in hearing from those who use a DVD recorder or any other device to save recordings from their 630's hard drives and exactly how such devices are connected.

Thanks.

PS. One other thing, one of the better tech reps I dealt with on a host of recent issues pointed out you need to ensure your external hard drive isn't disconnected during a PVR flush, otherwise when you reconnect it the receiver will not recognize it and will simply do its usual reformatting, goodbye recordings!
 
#2,517 ·
I would recommend you call Shaw before, and have them on the phone when you do this as it may make you lose all programming or factory reset your receiver and it will need to be "hit" by Shaw.
It has changed slightly with the last couple of firmware updates, but you can get to that point by, hitting onto the remote Options, 4, 9, 7, 7, 1 then info,
With firmware 46.47 on the right hand side of the screen now you have a windows and you scroll down to hard drives if you hit info again it gives you options to erase etc, or press the colored buttons in order, a,then b, then c, then d, and it gives you many options including erasing the hard drives.
With the newest firmware 46.23 the same up to the info button, you use yellow button c then to give you the reset and erase options.
Again I would use the above with Caution, and with Shaw's blessing.
 
#2,519 ·
Diamonds, I could not agree more with you. I recently had my PVR replaced and I lost all my external hard drive recordings. I posted my displeasure about this in the eSATA thread last month.

Needless to say this is a raw deal for external hard drive owners. The argument about copyright is understandable to a point but there is (in my mind at least) a very simple way to make users happy here. The external hard drive marriage ceremony is probably the result of some software code that SD has written to tie it to a specific PVR.

My suggestion would be for SD to modify that software code to allow the external hard drive to be "divorced" from the defective PVR and "married" again to the replacement PVR once the defective one has been returned to SD. This way, copyright is protected and user is happy. How about it SD???

In answer to your question on how to preserve those recordings, I have the following set-up: I use a Mac Mini with an Elgato Eye TV HD video capture module. I connect the Component (RGB+Audio) output from the PVR to the input on the Elgato unit. Then there is USB connector going from the Elgato unit to the Mac Mini. Once on the Mac, the programs can be edited to remove commercials etc. with the included software. Then a DVD can be written if wanted or simply kept on hard drives that can be backed up to avoid losing them.

There are certainly other set-ups out there and looking to find the best match will require a little homework. Good luck to you and hopefully SD will help out here....(Dream on I guess)
 
#2,520 ·
PVR FLUSH

A PVR Flush does NOT require a rehit from Shaw Direct and the process has not changed. A PVR Flush should only be done if your hard drive is showing full or near full even though you know there is hardly anything on it. You can do the flush on your own but you will greeted with this screen...

"ATTENTION:
Are you sure you want to flush your PVR database and reboot your receiver? This operation will remove ALL recording events, recording preferences, future scheduled recording and stop any recording in progress. All recordings on disk will be preserved with minimum program information." YES or NO

Basically, you will have to reset all your program timers and preferences but any shows you have already recorded on the hard drive will be saved with the show titles but the descriptions will be stripped away.

The process to do the flush is hit the OPTIONS button and then punch in all these numbers... 7-8-7-3-5-8-7-4 (PVRFLUSH)
 
#2,521 ·
Gary E is spot on as confirmed by this message I received from a level 2 SD tech rep in Calgary last week:

You don’t need to clear the log on the PVR but you can to try and clear any extra data that may be causing issues. To do this reset with the new guide it’s similar to the old guide, you would press OPTIONS then select numbers 7-8-7-3-5-8-7-4 then confirm the PVR flush. Please be aware doing this reset will erase: upcoming recordings, PVR settings, and PVR history. You will keep: existing recordings with program name, duration, date and time, and parental rating. It will remove the episode name and description. Make sure that the external hard drive is connected when doing this flush, otherwise the recordings stored on the external will be deleted when reconnected as the PVR would no longer recognize the external after the reset.
 
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