Shaw Bluesky and Internet 150 Review

At the bottom on the right you will see my Shaw Cable Bluesky box. This is a type of cable box that allows you to "talk" to the remote and have it do things. Literally talk to it that is.

It's wonderful and have never failed to pick out what I was telling it to do. If I ask for movies the list comes up. If I ask for space channel it goes there. It's great.

The PVR allows you to record up to six TV hows at the same time or record five and watch one live. The box also allows you to pause live TV and in some cases start the show over if you cam in part way (not on all channels).

It also has Gateway so that you can be 1000 miles away and use the internet to record a TV show. With their app you can also watch the live TV shows you would have missed from any location. It does not seem to be able to stream your PVR though as some do.

On the downside the box only offers 500 GB of storage and well this is OK for someone like me who will be watching the PVR recordings 2 or 3 times a week and being alone in the house. But if you add in a spouse and 2 kids you and a busy life for all of you - you now have the chance of running out of space before all the shows are watched.

On a positive note it offers channel locks with password entry to keep the kids out of things and a dedicated kids zone. This to me is of no use as I am alone, but would be of great use to a lot of people I know.

The ability on the guide to show only channels you are subscribed to does NOT exist so the only way to do this is to "favorite" all the channels then put it in show favorites mode. Other guide modes are things such as HD channels only and ALL.

One drawback to old TV owners such as myself is that if you have a switching box hooked up to it, then it can confuse the box as most of them do NOT like devices that are on all the time and always sending power to the HDMI cable. This can be handled by getting a more expensive switch. But being I don't have a game box or anything other than my Blue Ray hooked to the TV I'm all good. Still people have complained about the switching thing.

One other thing I find annoying is that every other update it seems to hangup on me and NEVER resets all the way. I never did bother to record the error code so no tech help for me there. But this leaves me having to power cycle the box in the morning. If I was to go away for a few days this might make me miss recording a show and I would be all kinds of pissy over that.

The box also does NOT like to be plugged into a low cost power bar as they don't tend to crank out the amps needed to power it properly. So unless you have a bar with a high amps rating you will have to plug it direct into the wall. This leaves it open to power spikes and once again the possibility of being with no TV to watch for awhile.

At this time there is only the option to rent the boxes and I'm fine with that as I prefer to rent even though in the long run it's more money - but when you rent and it blows up for no real reason some nice person shows up and gives you another one.

I got the deal where you get Bluesky and Wide Open 150 internet for a not bad price. I remember last time I had cable I was actually paying more and only getting 30 down for internet. At the time of this blog post there is also a GREAT deal for people who are new to Shaw where you pay the same as just the internet for a year.

And here is the link if you want to go and shop: https://www.shaw.ca/store/