[mark_in_2k]

I've recently given Rogers my 30 days notice of cancellation so that I can switch to Shaw's Ontario Value pack plan.

With Rogers I currently have a free HDPVR rental for life and we just subscribe to basic cable, plus one of the kids packs.

I've been "preparing" my wife for the switch over; signal drops during bad weather, possible problems with Shaws 630 PVR, etc.

What other things should I "warn" her about? I take it there's no on-demand like Rogers digital? How does the guide compare to Rogers? Is is as fast? Did I make a mistake to switch to satellite??!

 

[TJ77]

Signal loss is not something to worry about if your initial install is done correctly. It will happen from time to time during really severe weather. Some people have the preception that satellite goes down as soon as it starts raining, but that isn't the case.

There is no on demand. An online portal for viewing certain programs is supposed to launch over the remainder of the winter.

The 630 has some bugs, most of which can be termorarily fixed with a front panel reset. There are some horror stories here, which I believe to be the extreme rather than the norm. I've been mostly problem free since September.

I'm not sure what the Rogers guide is like. The 630 guide has 14 days on info, NEW tags, episode/cast/orginal air date info. It can be kind of slow, hopefully the soon due software release will increase the speed some.

 

[TheSphinx]

What would be considered proper install?

The guy that does bell in my city does shaw direct. In order to get two lines to the upstairs receiver a shaw cable guy who came in said he ran it from the downstairs back to the upstairs, and back down. I dont know how this works.

What should I tell him about proper install?

 

[Rondinelle]

I made the switch just yesterday myself (from Rogers to SD) so I'll be seeing how it all plays out. My wife actually really use to use the "on demand" and the SD sales staff (programmed to, I'm sure) advised that SD would be getting "on demand" when the 3rd satellite comes in for 2012...

I didn't necessarily buy that (though it would be nice), but I got the PVR for my wife so that she could just make sure she records all her shows and watch them when she likes...

For me, I relied more on the PVR than catching things "on demand". I'm told the QOS is very good and switched after seeing a friend's HD setup. I'll give it to Rogers that their HD appears to be the best, but my tired eyes didn't notice much difference with the SD HD signals... I hope that's the same on my basement bigscreen, but I admit I haven't placed my old HD PVR for sale on craigslist just yet (in case SD fails utterly and has my running back to Rogers, God forbid...)

 

[Vinyl Guy]

Few issues with Shaw Direct...

I have had Shaw Direct for 12 years, from the Star Choice days. I have never had any major problems. Yes, the odd hiccup, but nothing major. Total days of signal loss, 1 per year. Then for only a few minutes.

My sister had Rogers in her place & there was a hum through the TV as a result of ground loop. The cable guy never did figure out. Switched to Shaw Direct, no problems since.

The big plus, is you get to talk to real live people, in Canada, if you need service.

 

[57]

The big plus, is you get to talk to real live people, in Canada, if you need service.

Rogers CSRs are all in Canada. Lousy techs can be found on any provider.

 

[mark_in_2k]

Thanks for all the responses.

It's true when they say that people will voice complaints more than they voice "good news", so I'm hoping that I'll be in that camp!

Install is tomorrow for me, so I'll post back my thoughts soon.

 

[CompEng]

I've recently given Rogers my 30 days notice of cancellation so that I can switch to Shaw's Ontario Value pack plan.

With Rogers I currently have a free HDPVR rental for life and we just subscribe to basic cable, plus one of the kids packs.

I've been "preparing" my wife for the switch over; signal drops during bad weather, possible problems with Shaws 630 PVR, etc.

What other things should I "warn" her about? I take it there's no on-demand like Rogers digital? How does the guide compare to Rogers? Is is as fast? Did I make a mistake to switch to satellite??!

So how does the Shaw quality compare to your Rogers and the PVR? Because I'm tempted to go the opposite direction (from Shaw to Rogers) to get on demand. Why scour the guide to watch things when they are, miss them , etc. when you can get on demand. I already have Rogers Hi-speed net, and added Netflix for $8/mth which works amazing so far.

I barely had any service outage with Starchoice over 10 years. I was with rogers for cable tv before that. The switch to Sat and digital was a good one then. DVD quality. But now, the SD channels are very pixelated and no on demand, and the new 630 unit I bought just hung itself after not even a month. Seems this a 'feature' of the unit after reading the boards.

I'll be very curious about your experience of going from Rogers to Shaw. Starchoice customer service was always good. But its a new company now, and judging by the 630 PVR, maybe not a good one any longer.

Now that I have Netflix, I watch like two shows on Sat. Hardly worth the $$/mth it costs me.

 

[PeterK]

I just recently made the switch from Rogers to Shaw. Love the Shaw customer sevice, Rogers reps could never "do anything for me". The PVR (630) is also the cats miow and seems to be working great for me so far.

Best decision I made was leaving Rogers.

 

[mark_in_2k]

Since switching to Shaw Direct from Rogers, the only negative thing I have to say is that I'm a little disappointed with the picture quality compared to Rogers. There's just too much jpeg artifacting which is very noticeable on animated shows (we have 2 small kids so we see it a lot!).

However, I haven't had too many problems with the 630 PVR, and it runs more smoothly with the recent update. There's a few differences to the Rogers PVR in the way it operates, but we'll get used to the 630 soon enough.

Yes, unfortunately there's no on-demand, but we didn't use Rogers On Demand very much. If we missed something I'd simply download it from other sources.

 

[Yoshi]

I have been a Starchoice / Shaw Direct subscriber for over 7 years and have NO complaints. Customer service & technical service is the BEST ever. Our picture quality is absolutely clear. I continue to highly recommend SD!

 

[kcowan]

We have been a Shaw Direct customer for 3 years, and other than being oversold on the 530, the PQ is great on HD. Our only complaint is FoxHD.