Review by LoftyDan 
UPDATED: 86 days ago
member for 5.8 years, 648 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 Victoria,BC
 $42 per month
 about 5 days
 "Very Fast. Tech on time. Great value"
 "No PowerBoost on upload"
 "Very hard to beat, especially if you have digital cable ($10 discount)"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
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Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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First thing I should mention, is that all my comparisons to prior services, are to Time Warner in the US.
---misc. background information, skip if you want---
Knowing that I'd only once in the last 18 months ever gone over 100 GB I was confident that I'd be okay with that as a limit with Shaw Extreme, and for $42 a month with digital cable it seemed like a great deal. Before moving to Canada I had 5 and 6 Mb cable, briefly 10 Mb cable. and even 3 Mb DSL with no capping or shaping. I loved the 6 and 10 Mb cable, but the 1 Mb upload made it annoying when my family wanted me to share pictures and videos of trips I'd take and the like. Being that the upload was so low, my last 6 months in the states I switched to the slower DSL since the upload was equally as slow, and the price was better (for 6 months).
After arriving in Canada and living my first month on shared Telus DSL at a lowly 1.5 Mb, I was excited when at a our first place we had a "shared" Shaw connection. Looking for a job and just day to day things were definitely snappier on Shaw. Unfortunately, the sharer of our internet had a very unreliable router. So, after calling Shaw and hearing their promotional offer for cable TV and already knowing their internet offers, I scheduled an appointment for installation.
---review---
I called to schedule the appoint on a Thursday and the next Tuesday they could schedule me in. The tech arrived exactly on time (actually, I believe he was early), and had even called me the day before to try and move the appointment forward, which I did 2 hours, after calling him in the morning. He spent an hour wiring things outside, and scheduling a re-wire from the street because something was improper, and then come inside hooked up the Pace PVR and the cable modem.
While he was still on the phone, but after I noticed the cable modem was online, I did a quick speed test and notice he didn't hook me up to Extreme, and so mentioned it to him. He had the phone tech make a change, rebooted the modem, and I was on extreme. It averages 15 Mb / 1 Mb on speed tests, and 10 Mb / 1 Mb on longer transfers, so it is very easy to see the power boost working. I do notice on weeknights though that the upload often drops to around 700 Kb, but the download stays high. The lowering of the upload though makes it harder to do QOS, so I just have to limit anything that is low priority to a slower speed (like BitTorrent).
I've had the connection for about a month and it has been very solid. I love the fast upload (I'd love even faster if possible, and since I'm being capped at 100 GB supposedly, why not offer it...1 Mb is not extreme....it means that one simple digital photo takes 8 seconds at least to upload, which is far too long). All in all great service, and I'd never even consider Telus. TekSavvy I might, but not unless it was hard for me to stay within 100 GB.
---cable tv review---
I haven't included the price of the digital cable, as the first month is free.
The service I'd say is just okay. The Pace PVR box seems to be an okay box, and I think most of the issues it has are related to the guide software. After a lot of tweaking, I am able to get it to record all of the shows I want, just once per week/day depending on what I want. Some of the shows (shows that re-run all the time, but for which the box never thinks are new) I've had to set record timers for, which in the PVR list simply show the time and date of the recording and not the show, which seems a bit deficient to me.
Sound seems to drop out a lot on HD channels, but is easily fixed by pausing for 1 second and then unpausing, so that the show is now longer live. A good enough solution for me.
I am disappointed that a lot of show that are HD from the source are not HD at all on Shaw, even on the HD channels. I know it's a bad example, but for example Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy are in wide screen HD on ABC in the US, but when I watch ABC HD those shows are not in HD on Shaw. There are other HD shows that I think should be in HD but aren't, but I'm not 100% sure off hand.
Overall, I think Shaw gives a good value and product, even if it is not quite perfect. Regardless, I'm happy to be in Canada, and thankful Shaw isn't ripping me off and isn't testing ridiculous caps like Time Warner 40 GB on the high end.
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