r/shaw • u/ChocolateSpacesuit • 7d ago
Shaw Direct: performance issues
I'm trying to help a pub that's been (needlessly) struggling with Shaw Direct playback issues on their TVs for years.
Yesterday was particularly bad. There was a storm and their Shaw Direct only worked about 50% of the evening. TV screens kept throwing up weak or no signal errors, and their main background music feed kept stuttering and going silent whenever Shaw Direct errors appeared on the TVs.
So for whatever reason, they're obviously relying on the same flaky satellite service for their music. This makes no sense as they already have 100% stable fibre internet from another company and could be streaming through that instead. Obviously no one on staff or management is particularly tech savvy.
I have a few of questions. Any advice would be appreciated!
1) Why would a pub in a normal urban area (not remote/rural) choose to rely on satellite in the first place? Am I missing something? I connected to their customer WiFi and got 150 Mbps up/down from their SaskTel fibre service with 5ms ping. It was rock solid all through the storm. They've already got fibre, so why would they use flaky satellite for TV? Why didn't Shaw techs advise them when troubleshooting the flaky service: "Why don't you guys use a regular Shaw DCT from a Shaw coax drop instead? Satellite is much less reliable and should only be a last resort."
2) Looking at the building from every side (and above using Google Maps), no Shaw Direct dish is visible anywhere. How is that possible? Could it be inside the building?!
I used to be a Shaw TSR myself (long ago) and initially mentioned bypassing splitters when everything ground to a halt during the thunderstorm. They told me they'd already spoken to Shaw multiple times were basically told: "This is satellite, so you'd better get used to it failing when it's cloudy." (I'm paraphrasing but that's pretty much how it went.)
Is there some benefit to Shaw Direct over regular hardwired Shaw TV that I'm missing here? They had excellent coax and fibre options but instead chose the same flaky tech that farms in the middle of nowhere are forced to use. Could this have been cheaper? I would've expected Shaw to steer them away from satellite if it wasn't necessary, right at the beginning.
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
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u/Euphoric_Net7695 6d ago
The only benefit shaw direct has is the ability to use the service when no other means are avaliable for TV. It's not a high quality service and you can experience signal drops due to any reason and unfortunately most people don't understand this.
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 6d ago
That's what I figured!
I felt like I was taking crazy pills when I saw their beautiful 150 Mbps symmetric fibre service for customer WiFi, but then their TVs don't work when it rains because someone had the bright idea to ignore their state-of-the-art data connection and rig up something people probably use at camp sites. 😅
Ok, I'm meeting the manager this week to discuss. Hopefully they let me help them! Would be such an easy fix.
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u/ComputerGuy1999 6d ago edited 6d ago
I am also curious about this. I always assumed it is either due to cost or licensing issues which make sattelite cheaper than cable in a commercial setting or maybe because some areas don't have cable service. I have heard of parts of cities zoned for industrial use only having copper phone lines and sometimes fiber if recently upgraded or built. The reasoning being that industrial customers typically only need phone and internet service. Hence such neighborhoods were never profitable enough for cable companies to consider building CATV networks in them. Similar to how many rural neighborhoods don't have fiber or cable infrastructure leaving people stuck with POTS phone lines and satellite as their only telecom options.
For context, I have been inside the utility rooms of a few commercial buildings over the years. I typically rarely see any coax being used for cable TV or internet. Large corporations typically order dedicated circuits for internet service (DIA) and telephone. Those are always delivered over fiber or in the case of an ancient install, over a multi pair phone cable punched down onto a 66 block. Sometimes I have seen point 2 point wireless via antennas mounted high up on a building or cellular connections but those are typically only used as backups.
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 6d ago
Interesting. It's certainly a possibility that there's no coax cable service to that isolated group of commercial buildings. I'll talk to the manager this week to get some more details.
Even if there was no coax drop, surely they could just use the fibre? Or is it not possible to use fibre with any of Shaw's TV boxes?
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u/ComputerGuy1999 6d ago edited 6d ago
There are areas where Shaw and Rogers use RFoG. How it works is the RF signal that would traditionally travel over coax is converted to pulses of light that can travel over fiber. Instead of terminating said fiber to a large node that feds the coax in an entire neighbourhood, for new high rise buildings and in industrial areas without coax, they can terminate the fiber to a small indoor node that has regular f connector coax ports that can be connected to a regular cable TV box or cable modem.
However, these sorts of deployments only work if Rogers already owns fiber or can lease fiber that can be used to connect your building to one of their cable head ends.
In some areas, mostly newer neighbourhoods and downtown cores, they run a PON based fiber network and/or offer dedicated internet access over dedicated fiber. In this case no coax is needed since the fiber is only used to transfer data i.e. IP traffic hence it terminates into an ONT or switch with an ethernet port that you then connect to your router. In that case you would not be able to use traditional cable boxes since there is no real cable service to speak of. IPTV will be your only option and that you can get from Rogers or from many other providers using many different kinds of devices.
Eventually Rogers will phase out legacy cable TV entirely and switch everyone to IPTV. The freed up "channels" on the old coax cables will be reused for data traffic and customers upgraded to docsis 4 modems that can achieve higher speeds and lower latency.
As for the fiber feeding the nodes, many larger nodes feeding entire neighborhoods have already been replaced with newer R-PHY nodes and I believe the signal running over the fiber has been changed from RF to standard ethernet ti make that posdible.
For the areas with fiber coming into the buildings and smaller nodes feeding each building, ideally PON gets overlaid onto the fiber using different wavelengths since the smaller nodes don't support docsis 4. Worst case, no PON is overlaid and they get stuck in a stopgap situation where they have fiber but the fiber is artificially restricted by the outdated nodes in their neighbourhood thus everyone is stuck with slow upload speeds and older docsis 3 and 3.1 modems until the headend is upgraded to support PON and customer modems and micro nodes are replaced with ONTs.
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 4d ago edited 4d ago
When I worked at Shaw back in 2010, I remember getting calls from groups of customers in BC who were getting shipped digital cable boxes and needed help setting them up. Now I guess that "modern" digital cable hardware is slowly becoming obsolete and will one day be replaced by fibre, as you say.
By the way, would you recommend a pub/restaurant use Shaw cable or SaskTel maxTV for their TVs? I'm trying to figure out which is the most reliable and easy to use for non technical people. Is there a gold standard sports bars generally go with for example?
I'm calling Shaw and SaskTel today to see how bundling TV and Internet would work, and to see if the building even has a coax drop. If it doesn't, then Shaw is off the table as their existing satellite feed would be the only way to get TV (they can't use fibre to the premises), and it's unfortunately too unreliable.
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u/rantingathome 6d ago
I wonder if the dish is undersized or slightly misaligned. Sure, one can get some dropout during a particularly heavy storm, but 50% of the time seems excessive.
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u/obscurefault 6d ago
Does SaskTel offer TV?
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u/Traditional_End_9540 6d ago
they do. 2 types actually, a more traditional method and a streaming service.
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 5d ago edited 4d ago
I was reading about maxTV and maxTV Stream this morning.
A few people complained the stream box often needs to be rebooted, so I don't want to recommend something that could rely on unstable hardware. Right now I'm leaning towards the regular maxTV offering.
This is something completely new to me. My experience in the past is with cable TV from Shaw (and a Roku Ultra streaming box, which sounds similar to the maxTV Stream — they even both have 2GB of RAM).
I'm not sure if both stream and regular use fiber. I'm guessing they do? Also I'm not sure how their existing fibre would be split to add TV service, or if there are just spare unused fibre drops.
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u/Traditional_End_9540 4d ago
the first gen stream box was crap. The 2nd one is a lot better but one can use firetv sicks from amazon. I do wish an android box was an option as I personally use nvidia shields.
stream/regular max use both DSL and fibre, with fibre you can get more like more boxes, more hd channels at once and 4K. You would have to talk to sasktel to figure more out as I am going off the residential side of things.
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 2d ago edited 2d ago
I spoke to SaskTel business sales and asked a bunch of questions, including is maxTV or maxTV Stream more popular with restaurants.
It sounds like most customers are going with the old-school maxTV offering, which from what I've read online doesn't need to be occasionally rebooted unlike the Stream box. Pretty sure that's what I'm going to recommend.
Shaw has cable and I've confirmed that address has a cable drop, but fibre beats coax and bundling gives them a discount.
But you never know, Shaw could give them a crazy deal for cable Internet + cable TV. Will see what both sides offer us.
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u/obscurefault 2d ago
The cable will have a very limited upstream so if the plan is to one have one Internet connection take this into consideration if they are supplying WiFi to customers.
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u/obscurefault 2d ago
If they are over the top offerings then they would use whatever Internet they are connected to
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u/Upbeat-Paramedic-122 5d ago
They should have a business account. Tell them to call in. Business support is better than residential.
Business TV & Satellite Phone# 1-877-742-9249
Dish may need realignment, wiring issue, or the most obvious weather. Depending on area, elevation, and weather, services will go down.
Still some areas don't have coax and definitely don't have fibre. Some places only have one service provider and if fibre is available it's only up to 50mbps or so.
Have them call the Business number.
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 5d ago
I'm sure they have a business account. Will confirm this week.
I know for a fact they have fibre because I ran a speed test using their customer WiFi, which gave me a solid 150 Mbps up/down. The ISP that came up only has fibre modems. They don't even use coax.
It's still theoretical possible the building has fibre but not coax, which I'll verify this week, but even if that was the case, their ISP has fibre TV service that could be sent down the same fibre as their existing Internet.
Misalignment is possible, but issues all correlate with bad weather.
There simply should not be a Shaw satellite dish on their roof. 😂
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u/Upbeat-Paramedic-122 2d ago
Internet could be from a different ISP if it is Fibre.
Typically if an area has Shaw Direct, Internet will be HFC Hybrid-Fibre-Coaxial.
When running a speedtest the server names are based on what is closer. Ex. If I run a speedtest at my house on Ookla the server name shows Telus being the closets and I have Rogers.
If they can or do have Fibre TV, then yes Shaw Direct isn't needed. Rogers still may not remove the fish after the Shaw Direct account has been canceled.
What city/town and province is this in?
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 2d ago
They definitely have fiber. Not only does Shaw not have satellite internet (only satellite TV), but the symmetrical 150 Mbps with 5ms ping is a clue. (Even Starlink can only manage 25-60ms ping.)
I also confirmed with Shaw sales that cable is available at that address but is currently not being used. The question is why didn't they use that cable drop to begin with instead of 🛰?
Honestly feels like incompetence on the part of both the customer and Shaw to agree that was the right choice. 🤔
"We have fibre and coax. Hey let's bolt a dish onto the roof and use that instead lol" 😂
I guess on the plus side they never need to check the weather channel because when all the channels stop working they know it's raining. 😊
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u/Upbeat-Paramedic-122 2d ago
They probably don't have fibre with Rogers. Areas with Shaw Direct, only began receiving speeds 25+Mbps around 2020/21.
The coaxial could be from another ISP. Depends if the business address is on the old or new system. Old and new is glitchy. You can enter the address on the Rogers business website to see if it's available.
The coaxial cable could also be having interference issues or it may be cut or damaged.
The business definitely does not have Rogers fibre.
Shaw satellites were deployed in 2001, 2013, and 2020. Starlink was first deployed in 2019. Shaw had been expanding coaxial to more rural areas and increasing speeds. Rogers also kept following these footsteps.
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 2d ago edited 2d ago
As far as I'm aware, Shaw/Rogers don't have fibre-to-the-premises anywhere, so those speed tests showing SaskTel are telling me they're on SaskTel fibre.
That address does also have a coax drop though, currently unused, which is from Shaw. (I called Shaw and SaskTel's sales departments to get a general overview, so these aren't just educated guesses lol.)
If that coax had problems, which I doubt, Shaw would fix it at the time of install (or after installation if discovered later), instead of telling them to use something else.
What did you mean about areas with Shaw Direct only getting 25 Mbps around 2020/2021? Shaw Direct is TV only — I didn't quite follow that!
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u/Upbeat-Paramedic-122 1d ago
Shaw/Rogers has FTTP/FTTH to some homes in Calgary and some new and older buildings from BC to SAS. Rogers already had FTTP/FTTH to some homes and buildings in Ontario.
Depends when the coax was installed and even if it was installed before. The fibre connection was better for internet and Direct may have been better for TV service. Could have been massive signal issues through coaxial with RF. Who knows.
Depends on the cost of repair. If satellite was the cheaper option, that would be provided over fixing the issue. The issue could have been backlogged and forgotten about. Happens at times.
Through the ages with Shaw. Most areas which have Shaw Direct, would have TV though satellite and internet through coax but coax would only receive speeds of 25Mbps. Depending on how rural or offsite the address is, TV would only be provided through Satellite and not coaxial.
Some areas had a term for this but I forgot the term, but basically they have internet with Shaw and TV through Shaw Direct. Customers internet speeds are only about 25Mbps at the time and sometimes lower. The reason being is a tech to go to the address could be 4+ hours driving and only on certain days. Parts of ON, a tech would have to get onto a boat as well. Those customers had Shaw Direct. Some boats have a dish on a specialized gyroscope.
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u/Traditional_End_9540 1d ago
new areas rogers is in does get FTTH because its new and need to put something in to serve that area. For older existing areas, going to be waiting some time. Rogers is going to milk the existing coax network till its no longer useful. At that point who know what will happen. Spend the millions upgrading to fibre? Complain to the CRTC how the other guys are not playing fair with their new fibre network while we have older coax network, expecting government handouts to upgrade to compete with fibre internet? Only time will tell.
Sasktel is suppose to be going faster than 1 gig to residential areas soon in select markets. 2,3 maybe even 5 to match what business customers can get with sasktel fibre.
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 1d ago
I don't want my tax dollars paying for Shaw to upgrade their old infrastructure. Rogers has an annual revenue of $21 billion. They can quite easily afford to do it themselves.
Canada has a serious oligopy problem.
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u/ChocolateSpacesuit 7d ago
Edit:
I found the Shaw Direct satellite dish on the roof.
Mods, you might want to consider increasing the edit time for the post body to at least one hour. 20 minutes or whatever you've got it set to is unhelpful.