Just tried again this morning, cannot pause SNP, don't ge...

[philipgarson]

Just tried again this morning, cannot pause SNP, don't get the message but the pause symbol comes up and the broadcast continues without pausing. No problem pausing CNN. 

[philipgarson]

Now I'm, getting the "This set top box does not support it" message when I try to pause CNN and pause now works on SNP. This is just weird.  

[philipgarson]

Not sure why this made a difference but changed channels using the channel up/down away from CNN and back and now the pause works! Previously changed channels by selecting from the guide. 

[philipgarson]

Still acting up, very sporadic one minute it gives me the message that pausing is not supported next minute it pauses normally. Changing channels using the channel up/down seems to restore it to normal operation but a minute latter it refuses. 

[shaw-tony]

@philipgarson definitely an odd situation and thank you for keeping us up to date. I haven't heard of any other reports of this issue. Does it happen on all TV boxes? I do see the signal to your equipment is quite off-spec which may cause this intermittent issue. I'd recommend scheduling a service technician over to improve the signal in your home and to make sure this doesn't continue to happen.

[philipgarson]

Thank you for the response I have been hesitating to call for another service call, by my count this would be the fourth for this problem over about a year and it seems each time little troubleshooting is possible and the technician just replaces the box and some of the connections and a week later the problem reappears. I'll call to set up another service call.

[philipgarson]

Finally called for a service tech, excellent response got the service call next day. Technician, Paul, had not seen this problem before, same as all the techs so far. Changed the feed cable from the vault to the house along with the cables to the two boxes that were acting up. Rebooted the boxes and the problem went away (for how long?  as rebooting always seems to solve it at least temporarily) . His only suggestion was that maybe the problem is caused by using two remotes on one box. (we have extra remotes as a result of having boxes replaced several times and the two boxes that were acting up were the ones where we were using two remotes, although we had the problem before we started using the two remotes). We'll try using just one remote for a while and see if that is the problem. I'll update if the problem returns. Paul said he would check back in a while.

[mdk]

@philipgarson -- "pausing" a channel requires a properly-functioning disk-drive inside the Shaw PVR.

On a BlueCurve, switching channels stops recording the channel that you were watching, and starts recording the new channel, i.e., a "delete" operation on the disk-drive of the recorded content, and allocation of different sectors on the disk-drive.  So, if some sectors are "bad", switching to a new channels uses "other" sectors, while the "delete" operation is cleaning-up.

Switching to a different BlueCurve will give you a different disk-drive.  It is not likely that the replacement BlueCurve will also have a "bad" disk-drive.

You don't have an external disk-drive attached to the BlueCurve? If you are connecting it to the replacement BlueCurve, and it is the disk-drive that has the "bad" sectors, your symptoms will continue.

[philipgarson]

Interesting, wonder why the Shaw Tech didn't consider that. I assume the disc drive you are referring to is  in the main box which was replaced some time ago so that would mean we got really unlucky and got two bad boxes. No I don't have an external disc drive, the BlueCurve boxes don't have connections for external disc drives. Is the recording actually on an internal disc drive or is it in the cloud? If the symptoms continue I'll mention your theory to the next Tech that comes. Thanks for your input. 

[rstra]

Unlikely the disk drive being the problem as it has been swapped, and you would have had issues with recordings. I always felt that swapping equipment was the last resort, most cable problems are rf related, or, in this case, a poor moca network. The technician made the correct decision be re-wiring the cable.