I have now had the Gateway system for 2 weeks now. There are defiantly pros and cons to this system, and I am not sure which side of the fence I am on.
Install went fairly smooth, but it took 3 hours. I would say 20 minutes to hook up, and the rest of the time downloading updates for the system, and sitting on hold with Tech Services. The installer was friendly, but to be honest he didn’t know a lot about the gateway outside of how to install it. Basically he set the screen resolution, and told me just to play around with the system in order to learn it. That was fine for me given my background.
He also was clueless about the SMC router. I asked for bridge mode, and he had no clue what that meant. Kept repeating “No worries man, this is plug and play”. As we all know it is not. Again not a big deal, but what really ticked me off was he had the router in his hand, but forgot to install it and left. Now I am waiting over 2 weeks for them to mail me a SMC router. Kind of a moron move if you ask me.
As for the system, I have 3 TV’s. I think this is the minimum you will want to justify this systems cost. Otherwise you can get 2 used PVR’s for less than half. I like the interface but it is really buggy. Flipping channels while the guide is up, will sometimes result in wacky things being displayed. I didn’t know there was a clock on the guide until I saw that the show information was overlapping it. Switching from SD to HD can result in the show information covering the whole screen for up to 15 seconds. When you page through the classic guide, it takes a few seconds to download the next set of results to the portal, this is really annoying. No more “Exit” button (really?). Honestly, a lot of these bugs could and should have been caught in house. Also, The portal does not have an IR extender which is a step back from the Motorola boxes.
On the pros, there is the potential. If they can work out the display bugs, it will be a solid system. The response time from pressing guide is instant (unlike Telus). It works with my Harmony remote. I like the PVR anywhere feature, that is a great.
So bottom line is that I am less than impressed with this system. It has a long way to go to be mainstream ready. I in no way recommend someone who is not ready to live with the bugs use it. I almost think Shaw should give a discount to their early adopters. It is that buggy.
I am holding out hope that this code drop in September will magically fix these issues. However, if you are on the fence between Telus and Shaw, stay there for another few months. Shaw could end up with an awesome system, but right now it’s like “The Dion”. All promise for tomorrow, with a lot of hassle today.
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