Thursday, October 2, 2014

Shaw Direct II

Yesterday's post started quite the discussion in the comments section.

It appears that as long as you use the same dish and receiver you used last year there will be no problem. If you had your system upgraded to the three LNB dish then there were software or firmware changes made to the receivers attached to that dish that prevents them from working with one of the old dishes. Al had success with the three LNB setup down south last year as long as he did not attempt to receive signals from the new satellite. Another person on the IRV2 forum had the opposite experience, his did not work down south.

Jean and Skip from Nanaimo asked for some reassurance their old system would work on the RV even though they had the dish and receivers in their house updated. I told them the only way to know for sure was to try it. They did today and found they only received Ch 299. They called Shaw Direct and were talked through a factory reset on the receiver.

I really encourage everyone to do this. Try it before you leave. It will be awkward and expensive to have to do it from down south without letting it slip that you are away from home. If you call from a USA phone, they will see the area code and will know where you are.

13 comments:

  1. Typically when my receiver is only getting 299, it means that it has been a while since the receiver has been able to see a satellite and all it takes to get it going is to do a "Receiver Refresh" which is a do it yourself thing online. Just access your account and there is a screen there for that function.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That has been my experience as well. I put an old dish on the side of the workshop where I park the motorhome and hook up to it when I park for the summer. It takes care of this problem.

      Delete
    2. I have also heard that an online refresh is somehow different than a refresh signal sent by one of the SD techs.

      Delete
  2. I did the refresh on line and that's when we could only get ch 299, she said the receiver had to be reprogrammed. The standard def channels now are in the 300's . I phoned them on skype from the states last year but I had to stay on line for about 40 minutes .

    ReplyDelete
  3. An Email from Ray:

    Hi Croft. I don't have a Google account so it would not let me leave a comment.
    We were in Blanding, Utah yesterday with my old SD set up and it worked fine. Funnily enough I tried to set up a new LNB but it would not work pointing at the existing birds. Please advise all to set up their systems before they leave as the setup is not the same. When you do receive the signal use the "Go Back" button not "Exit" as you will not have any sound. I will build up my courage to try the new LNB but I sure don't want to do it at the moment.

    Ray

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Ray, I think it has to do with the fact that the receiver must be "paired" with the type of dish. The seem to be going out of their way to make things difficult for us!

      Also, thanks for the tip on using "Go Back" after finding the signal! The loss of sound and having to re-boot every time was becoming very frustrating. I will try the "Go Back" method.

      Delete
  4. We use Shaw year round in our coach so should really have no issues, we just wait and see.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. From the replies, it seems you and I will have no problems. If it works here, it will work there. Jest don't expect any programs off the new 99W bird.

      Delete
  5. Hi Croft,just to add my two cents,I switched to the triple LNB before heading south last year and had no problems,even if you try to select a G1 channel,it will just show no service.
    I was even surprised to get the G1 south of Eugene Ore.
    All programming on 107 and111 were just like they always were.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Bill, it was you I was referring to in the reply below about the Bird on the Wire.

      I will have to find out where you are heading this year, you have not updated your Blog in some time.

      Delete
  6. Email from Al:

    Hi Croft:

    I thought that I would make a comment about your comment about not trying to get channels off the new third sat down south. I'm not sure if you meant to intimate that trying this would some stop the receipt of Shaw down there, but I don't think it would.

    As indicated, I was using a satellite internet tripod down there with the Shaw LNB hung off the side of the internet transmitter/receiver LNB (it's a kit that they call a "bird on the wire" BOW). As I'm "addicted" to the net, I have to aim the dish to the internet satellite (99W), as a result the dish skew value is different than Shaw requires for their sats, if I pulled some old trig textbooks I might be able to understand why. Depending on where we were down there we could get both sats or only one of the two (signal strength on the one I couldn't get was below 60 which seems to be the drop off point with the 630). I was still able to get the channels on the one sat and I wasn't cut off service. With the spot beam of the new sat, the signal strength down there would be effectively zero, hence the same result.

    I wouldn't be worried about the complete loss of Shaw in the southern US if you have the new three sat LNB and a newer receiver programmed for it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry if I was misinterpreted, I simply meant that you should not expect to get any programs off the new satellite because the footprint does not extend below the Canadian border.

      A friend uses the Bird On The Wire system with his Hughes Internet dish. It was working quite good for him down in the RGV.

      Delete
  7. Maybe it's a good thing that I switched from Shaw Direct to Shaw Cable this year so we won't be bringing our satellite dish down with us anymore. Our RV park in Palm Springs has cable and Internet at each site. We love the broadband Internet service and this year will add Basic cable TV.

    As far as Canadian programming (i.e. hockey and news) I can get those off the Internet and easily mirror them to our TV.

    ReplyDelete