New Shaw Gateway Experience

[Lt.Spears]

How do i manually update the gateway?

[boosterjuice]

Gateway Initial Review by a Bell user(after 1 night usage):

Hey all, I got my new Gateway installed yesterday. Reporting back as promised.

What I have:
I’m currently with Shaw for my internet and phone service. I have x-treme internet package and unlimited long distance phone. For tv, I have Bell Satellite with (1) 9241 receiver in the bedroom and (1) 9242 dual mode receiver in my basement theatre room that also sends an SD signal to the living room. Three tvs in total. My monthly bill with Bell is $130/month. In total, I’m spending $240 a month for tv, internet, and phone.

My Gateway Setup:
I ordered the X-Large Gateway promo package. This gives me the gateway and three portals and bundles in phone and broadband50 (big upgrade over x-treme) internet service. My pricing is $139 per month for the first year, $169 for the second year, and $199 for the third year and thereafter. This pricing includes the monthly rental for the gateway system and (3) portals.

Installation:
Firstly, I was very impressed with the speed of install. I ordered it via phone on Monday and the installer came as scheduled yesterday morning. The install took approx 1.5hrs. I could tell the installer was in a hurray to leave to his next appt but he made sure to show me how to use it.

Menu and Interface:
I love the interface of the Gateway. It automatically divides channels up into genres for you through a very user-friendly menu system. This is completely different from the Bell guide that I am used to but I had no problem navigating. It divides the channels up based on sports, kids tv, HD, Movies, or all. The response time seems very fast in navigating from screen to screen. I notice some video stutter when switching between tv and menu. There are minor delays here and there but overall it is very fluid. The Gateway does have a traditional guide that is similar to Bell that you can use as an option.


Shaw onDemand:
Being a former Bell Sat user, I had no idea how amazing shaw ondemand was. From the limited advertisements that I have seen for this, I had thought that this was for movies only. For the uneducated (like I was), this applies to regular TV and free movies as well. I couldn't believe my eyes when I could pull up HBO programming ondemand and some in HD. This is also great for the rest of our family as the ondemand service has many kids programs as well. No more clogging my PVR with Dora the explorer, Diego, etc. These programs (and many others) are available ondemand. Of course, Shaw’s onDemand pay service has an amazing selection of movies as well with many in 1080p. This alone is worth the switch from Bell.


Picture Quality:
Picture quality looks great to my untrained eye. I had some French Open Tennis on yesterday and it looked great. To me, it seems very similar to Bell HD quality ( I did not test side by side). I tested on my 106” projector screen.

Audio Quality:
The audio seemed good on my 5.1 setup. I need to test it out further at higher volume. You need to specify in the audio settings that you want Dolby Digital instead of stereo. We did have an audio problem on our SD tv though. For some reason, the volume would go inexplicably high on the first volume notch (as soon as you turn the volume up one notch, it would be at a high level). This happened a few times and would revert back to normal. I’m not sure if this my tv or the gateway portal.

PVR Experience:
Of course, the main benefit of the Gateway system is to have a shared PVR system between multiple TVs. We haven’t had to record 6 shows at once yet. I doubt that we will because most of what we need can be found through their onDemand service. The one thing that I really liked about the PVR was that it separates tv shows into folders. It would piss me off on Bell that my PVR would flood with recordings of Dora, Diego, Barbie, and other kids shows. With this PVR, episodes show up in folders. Really nice feature. The one small irritation I had with the PVR recording was that it automatically recorded “All episodes” instead of “new episodes only” by default. This means that for each recording, I have to spend a little extra time to ensure that the settings are correct. Bell Sat seems a little more polished in the recording options. Again, just something that I can easily get used to.

Internet:
Shaw installed a new modem so I could get the broadband 50 service. This new modem does not play nice with my existing wireless router setup. I am still in the process of working with Shaw tech support to fix the issue. I guess the modem has to put into “bridge” mode for it to work with my existing setup.

Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF).

So far the WAF is good. She loves the onDemand service but misses the operation ease of the Bell system. We've both had Bell for over 12 years so it feels a bit strange for her. I expect that in a few weeks she will completely forget about the Bell system.



Very happy that I switched from Bell to Shaw Gateway (so far). We'll see if that changes in the weeks to come.

[OilKiller]

Originally Posted by boosterjuice

The one small irritation I had with the PVR recording was that it automatically recorded “All episodes” instead of “new episodes only” by default. This means that for each recording, I have to spend a little extra time to ensure that the settings are correct. Bell Sat seems a little more polished in the recording options. Again, just something that I can easily get used to.

Check under Settings. I know you can set the default options you want to be on or off for series recordings so you don't have to change the default for each new series' recording. I did so, so it would record first run only any time I set a series recording. Just can't remember exactly where it is right now, but it's under Settings somewhere.

[boosterjuice]

Originally Posted by OilKiller

Check under Settings. I know you can set the default options you want to be on or off for series recordings so you don't have to change the default for each new series' recording. I did so, so it would record first run only any time I set a series recording. Just can't remember exactly where it is right now, but it's under Settings somewhere.

I'll check it out.

[GoinAllTheWay]

It's in the PVR folder in "Menu". Press "menu" and then over to the Yellow PVR folder with the red dot in the middle and select "options".

You may also want to consider setting the stop time as "1 minute late" in the default settings. Occasionally I've missed the "next time on" or the last minute of a show for some reason.

Glad you are enjoying the system, Booster. I've had it since January and love it.

[wooohooo]

Originally Posted by Rathji

If one computer is connecting with wireless fine and another is connect poorly, I would be more inclined to think there is an issue with the computer rather than the wireless.

Does the other (slow) computer support wireless N? If it is just G then there might be enough interference to mess with it while leaving your N signal strong enough to still function. I assume the mac does, but that would depend on its age.

The computer definitely is N compliant. It runs on every network fine, just not at my parents house where they have the Shaw Gateway. I didn't have problems with their old Telus box.

I've also tried to even set up right next to the box and I still get the same results. I will occasionally... and very occasionally get normal speeds but then in a few minutes it'll cut back and go back to being slow.

Because it's not at my house, it's not too big of a deal, but when I do go over it gets to be a huge pain in the butt.

[Hockey]

Kind of annoyed that every once in a while it will tell me I don't subscribe to a channel, when I clearly do. Then I have to unplug things and plug them back in.

[Diemenz]

Anyone else experience missing channels in the guide? I cannot see any channels above 247 unless i look at the channels in the menu.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by Hockey

Kind of annoyed that every once in a while it will tell me I don't subscribe to a channel, when I clearly do. Then I have to unplug things and plug them back in.

Twice a month for me, but this month has been worse, 3 times in 3 weeks.

I don't know the logitics, but why they can't write code to check when this message comes up is baffling.

[Lt.Spears]

I'm having issues with my whole Shaw setup.

My old gateway was trekking me the wrong time, it was a exact hour out. Turns out the chip inside wasn't talking to the coax cable. So tech came over and swapped gateways for me. Ran a total of 4 hours before my whole system shut down. Now i have no internet and my time on my TV is now 13 mins behind. Worst part is, they are coming Friday to fix it, so no internet and crappy TV for 3 days.

I'm getting really fed up with this crap. Not impressed with Shaw at all.

[Hockeyguy15]

How is this working out for everyone?

[Telgip33]

Originally Posted by Hockeyguy15

How is this working out for everyone?

I've had mine for about a month now and no issues, other than a long set up time (took Shaw guy about 3 hours to set up the gateway and 3 portals).

Took a little getting use to the way it works, different that the old system but once you figure it out its all good.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Hockeyguy15

How is this working out for everyone?

The first 2 weeks, I was furious at the guide since it didn't do what I expected it to do when I hit a button.

For example, one issue I had was when you are in your PVR menu, if you are on a show and push right before the show listing loads on the right, it exits you from the menu since it assumes you want to go to the next menu. Then you need to go back and scroll the list to get the show again.

After I got use to the few quirks and how the interface is completely rebuilt compared to the one Shaw has used for many years, it has been awesome. I set all the recordings and my kids can watch whatever if they are downstairs. My 4 year old can easily manoeuvre the menus to access whatever show she wants. The best part is I can use the downstairs portal and watch it using my slingbox , although I have to manually turn the program on, since I have been too lazy to figure out how to get it working fully, but some people have. I really only use it to watch games while i am on my computer, so I really don't mind it.

The only downside is I have had to reboot my portals and gateway every once and a while, maybe 3 or 4 times each now, and it has been almost 6 months.

[Hockeyguy15]

Well it sounds like it has gotten better since they rolled it out last year then. From some of the reviews online it sounded like it was a bust, but there aren't many comments on it from around March until now so it was hard to tell.

[Hockeyguy15]

So they are coming to install it next weekend, anything I should know or tell the tech to do?

[Rathji]

Not really. Just have a place for them to put the gateway, as it is about the size of the old PVR, or they will screw it to your wall - which might not be a bad thing. In my case it would have been, since that area is totally finished.

[PeteLFan]

Just got my gateway set up today, seems pretty slick will take a little getting used to again. Luckily I've memorized all the channels from before.

[Hockeyguy15]

Originally Posted by PeteLFan

Just got my gateway set up today, seems pretty slick will take a little getting used to again. Luckily I've memorized all the channels from before.

Are the HD channels still 200 and up?

I get mine on Saturday, looking forward to trying it out.

[PeteLFan]

Originally Posted by Hockeyguy15

Are the HD channels still 200 and up?

I get mine on Saturday, looking forward to trying it out.

Yup it's the same as before. Funny I could never get the telus channels down, yet I still remembered shaw.

[PeteLFan]

When using the remote how do you get further into the week for scheduling, there is no next button.