said by ShawSean:@tlhIngan - If you guys have any suggestions on how we can improve the guide functionality. please send them and your account details to shawfeedback[at]sjrb.ca. It's your suggestions that help guide(no pun intended) our decision making when improving our current products/services.
It's less about the guide, and more about the UI in general. The guide's OK, sort of, but the UI just irks me because it's quite complex. I suppose one way would be to license the TiVo OCAP software, but there's still the problem that the box feels very sluggish and unresponsive.
And no proper season passes or wishlists (e.g., my TiVo will catch all new episodes of Mythbusters and skip repeats, if I tell it to, or it can record repeats, but only once so if they show up 10 times in a week, it's recorded once).
The best option though would be to use CableCARDs - which have been around in the US for 5 years now. The whole purpose of which lets Shaw secure the signal, but lets users pick their cablebox. If you want TiVo, you get TiVo. If you want Moxi, you get Moxi. If you want Windows Media Center, you get WMC. Or if you just want a TV and no boxes making a mess, they have TVs with CableCARD built in (no different than when they had regular analog cable).
And yes, each CableCARD is treated as the same as a digital box - so Shaw still collects the $3/month per CableCARD. The other benefit is the users who buy these things are all technically knowledgeable since they have to import this equipment at the moment.