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Shaw Direct 630 Official Problems / Issues / Resolutions Thread. Read posts 1, 2

418K views 1K replies 234 participants last post by  RuralRouter 
#1 ·
We have a thread on the owner experiences and several people mentioned they'd like to see an "issues" thread. Here it is.

Please try to limit discussion to "real" issues and possible resolutions, workarounds, etc.

Try not to post "I tried to record and it wouldn't. After a reboot, it recorded OK" since that's pretty self-evident.
 
#1,040 ·
Do you have direct cables coming from the dish to each receiver? No splitters?

Sounds like your channel mapping might be mixed up. Phone up SD and do a couple of rehits. This can be done without talking to anyone. Or you can do the rehits/refreshes from the Self Serve section of the SD website.
 
#1,043 ·
This is a firmware bug and a very bad one. Just last night my 630 rebooted spontaneously and when it came back no channels were watchable. It said every channel was blocked due to parental controls (even though they are not) and would not display anything until the security code was entered. It's not the first time this happened and not the only receiver. (Before anyone says its a signal issue, Ecb/No was over 10 on both tuners.)

Here is the clincher, it wouldn't let me enter the security code either. Every time I entered the first digit, it would erase it and go back to the first digit entry again. After entering some invalid digits and making it fail, it would then let me enter the correct first digit and the complete code.
 
#1,044 ·
Ok here is what I was told to do to fix the issue by CS
Unplugg the receiver and unscrew the sat cable.
Plug the receiver back in and leave it for 3 minutes
screw the sat cable back in and then send a refresh signal either by phoning CS or using the website.

Worked for me thought I would share.
 
#1,045 ·
pixelization / blocky picture during recording playback

I've only owned the dsr 630 for a few weeks, and I got a dish tune, new lnb but I still have noticed pixelization at times when watching back recordings... Very annoying and frustrating... Never have had this issue watching anything live, unless a rain/snow storm, but it happens quite a bit on recordings (most notibably on SD channels)... I even plugged the unit directly into the wall instead of a powerbar as per shaw direct technician's advice, as he said these units are very sensitive to power?? what kind of equipment did I buy?... i don't understand why these units glitch like this in recording, and yes I have the most up to date software... any ideas what is happening here?

thanks in advance
 
#1,047 ·
Woke up this morning and all my channels say "Not Subscribed", re-booted 4 times, went online and refreshed the receiver 3 times and still nothing, called support and I have an hour wait.........nice. This happens once in a while but the refresh usually fixes it. Hope I get a call back before the Jays game starts.
 
#1,050 ·
EVPHD 630 how to reformat harddrive?

I let the harddrive fill up on my EVPHD 630 PVE from Shaw.

After manually deleting shows to make room for new recordings (which I should not need to do by the way dont't get me started, a 5 yr old could make better software "Long live TIVO"), the newly recorded shows are not viewable. Some would have a duration of >500 hrs (basically garbage).

I then performed a factory reset and cleared all shows.

Then I could record and view 1 show that I was currently watching, scheduled shows still were not viewable, some of the newly scheduled recorded shows had the correct show duration indicated in the pvr menu, others did not, none the schedule recorded shows were viewable. And sometimes the PVR would always indicate it was recording on both tuners when it was not.

Diagnostics indicate the harddrive has passed the test.

So I would like to clear everything, reformat the hard drive and start over.

Do I need to reformat the harddrive? WIll it fix this mess?

What are my options?

thanks in advance for any suggestions, my warrenty period is up by the way.
 
#1,051 ·
I would do a factory reset without reformatting the drive first. It might fix the problem. It's most likely the programming database (index) that's corrupted, not the drive itself. The instructions on how to fix that are documented in a post but I've lost track of where (a search might find it.) Unless there is some programming that "must" be retrieved, I would plan on reformatting the drive eventually.
 
#1,053 ·
No signal,defaulted to 299,ch. 105 reset to default,no standby time display.

This morning,after a Thunderstorm and a brief power outage,the following happened:

1)HDPVR-630 displayed the red 'no signal' light.

Fix: Front panel reset.

2)Defaulted to channel 299

3)Channel 105 was reset to default -all settings gone.

Fix: reset local city.

4)Time not showing in Standby mode,yet 'Show Time in Standby Mode' was et to on.

Fix: Set to 'off',shut receiver off,turn back on,set to on,again.Turn receiver off, FIXED.

Ok.All,except #1 are minor,but still annoying and while I can handle it,my wifer can't and given Shaw Direct's phone wait problem at present,she'd be without help for hours -seeing as she's no computer literate,and can't email support like I do!

The only other problem I notice is that one morning the rcvr was on channel 105 and neither I,or my wife left it there the night before.Today,after trying change the channel when I first switched it on,somehow it went to ch. 105.

ch. 105's instructions say 'ch +",or 'last channel' to change the channel,but only 'last channel',or 'direct channel' entry gets me out.

Other than that,so far,so good,but I won't be buying any more 600 series receivers.
 
#1,054 ·
Live On Disc

I have had LOD off for most of the life of my 630. I decided to turn that feature on again last week.
Sunday afternoon it was recording the Indy 500. I decided to watch the beginning of the race while the 630 continued to record. Immediately the unit shut down and went into reset, losing part of the recording time, something infrequent with the LOD off. Needless to say, I can't trust the unit stability until Live on Disc is turned back off.
 
#1,060 ·
PVR 630 playback skips

I have a new PVR 630 running the 7.33 firmware. Ran fine for a month. Now when I play a recording it skips forward by about 2 min after playing for a few seconds. I did a soft reboot & the skipping went away for a while but now its back. Any suggestions? Thanks
 
#1,061 ·
I have a new PVR 630 running the 7.33 firmware. Ran fine for a month. Now when I play a recording it skips forward by about 2 min after playing for a few seconds. I did a soft reboot & the skipping went away for a while but now its back. Any suggestions? Thanks
Unplug the receiver for five minutes. Once you plug it in again, let it fully load (the guide and everything) before you start playing back again or flipping channels or whatever. It might help.
 
#1,064 ·
DSR630 constant reboot

Hi guy's. Ive had dsr630 eight months without any problems, after 7.33 update the unit is in constant reboot cycle. I can turn on tv then dsr630
I will get a chanel 30 seconds and reboots or I will change chanels
the unit will reboot. I tried a different tv same problem
Any ideas. Thanks Bob
 
#1,065 ·
Hi guy's. Ive had dsr630 eight months without any problems, after 7.33 update the unit is in constant reboot cycle. I can turn on tv then dsr630
I will get a chanel 30 seconds and reboots or I will change chanels
the unit will reboot. I tried a different tv same problem
Any ideas. Thanks Bob
It really sounds somehow like the signal is lacking. So either it isn't strong enough, or you're getting some fluctuations in the voltage or brown-outs or something. Or maybe one of your cable isn't tight enough or something.

Although it's weird that it happened after the update. Did you try a reboot? An unplug? Or in the worst case scenario, a factory reset?
 
#1,066 ·
Interesting issue with my wifes 630! Her pvr list was empty, but the unit was reporting 39 percent usage on the disk. I took a chance and did a PVR flush and after it finished the pvr had 6 shows listed. After I deleted them the unit was back to 0% full. She had deleted the shows, but looks like they didn't really delete and lost their pointers until the flush made them visable again.

Just something someone else might encounter. She wants all her space free for HD Wimbelton tennis!
 
#1,067 ·
I'm curious about this -- since getting the update I always seem to have some percentage of space used even when my recording list is empty. Something like 8-10% capacity. I was thinking it was maybe a new thing with the update, some cache thing perhaps. But after your description, it makes me wonder about this. When you said you did a "flush," what did you do exactly? I do recall that when the 630 rebooted once, it did a PVR flush on its own. And it was annoying quite frankly because it got rid of all my timers. But doing it myself might be a different story. Can you explain what you did to flush it?
 
#1,069 ·
I've been having the same problem as isb035 and TheHans: deleted programs are not really being deleted on occasion. They disappear from the PVR list but the space they take up is not released. After a flush the phantom recordings again appear in the PVR list and can be deleted. I think this has been happening since last October at least but I only discovered it after getting the latest update (at which point a flush resurrected recordings from Oct).

Not sure if the problem is worse with the latest release. I only discovered it when recording sporting events of long duration; the delete should have freed up several % but didn't. Tried a reformat but the problem is still there.

For me the likelihood of a delete failing seems much higher for large recordings ( e.g. 3 - 5 hours of HD). Anybody else experiencing this?
 
#1,070 · (Edited by Moderator)
I had the same problem. Drive was almost full even though I only had about 6 hours of HD recording sitting there. I called tech support about a month ago and the tech had me look at a screen that said my hard drive was OK and I shouldn't worry about it. I was not confident that some how my DVR would get through this without incident but I didn't have time to argue. I deleted as much as I could to get free up space before I went on a short vacation. When I came back it said that my drive was 91% full. Again I deleted a couple of programs that I wasn't going to watch to ensure that I could record the evenings fare. Called tech support and they recommended a Flush. Lost my 60 or so recording schedule items and the drive came back at the same percentage as before except now I could see recordings that I had deleted months ago. I deleted all of the old recordings and my disk usage dropped from around 70% to 12%.

The loss of the recording schedule is a major inconvenience but at least I got my drive back.

Bob
 
#1,071 ·
Shady, I recently did a PVR flush and got rid of my failed deletions. This past weekend, I recorded the Nascar race and started watching it before it was finished recording. I eventually caught up to where the recording was at so I stopped the recording and deleted it. Instantly I noticed that the % didn't drop. Thinking this was because of the live recording that happens with any channels that you are currently on as well, I changed the channels a few times to lose the current live recording but alas the % didn't go down.

In thinking back to my list of recordings that came back after the recent PVR flush, there were some of the NBA finals that I did a similar thing with. The rest could have been related to the 630 doing a self reboot during a recording. So the theory for myself at least is that if it doesn't completely finish a recording it won't properly delete it. Could be a coincidence, but I think I might try and test that theory out before the next PVR flush I do.
 
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