Is Shaw the only guilty party here or are all TV providers on the same bandwagon? Anyone remember Beta vs VHS? I am holding on to my 630 receivers because of functionalities and connections that have disappeared on the 830's.
10 (yes 10) years ago I bought a high-end Denon DVD player and the only output was HDMI: no RCA, no component, no composite, no S video, no optical, no coax.
It seems technological "advances" both add and remove functionalities and it is very frustrating for the end-user. This is true in both hardware and software. For example even Apple removes some functionalities that were present on earlier versions of their Mac OS.
The bottom line is that most of these changes are there to benefit the corporations in some way, not the end consumer and that is sometimes not a pleasant thing for the consumer.