Canadian Shaw Satellite dish in USA?

[Milom]

Any fellow Canadians with a Shaw Dish mounted on their RV and Travel to USA and get to use it? I just got off the phone with Shaw Direct Satellite service to activate my Roof mounted dish and everything was proceeding nicely until I told her the RV was 5 miles south of the Canadian border in Birch Bay WA. and she replied that absolutely Shaw could not/would not provide service for use in the USA. I told her that I am a Canadian resident and the service could be installed with the RV at my Canadian address. She replied that once the service was installed it could only be used in Canada??? Really! Any Canadians with Canadian Satellite dishes please tell me You can use them in the good old USA without breaking any laws! Any one

[harris155]

This is being discussed again on this thread as people are heading south again.
http://www.irv2.com/forums/f53/tv-op...th-205858.html
It has always been the case that Star/Shaw will offer no customer service once you leave Canada.

[frank48]

I can tell you this it worked last year in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas it worked perfectly and we will be leaving here in Ontario in about three weeks and I will be surprised if it doesn't work I know the park that we are in there is lots of Canadians with Shaw satellites on their Roof and tripods we will activate the receivers down there on the Internet with our laptop and everything should be fine you can do it yourself good luck

[Hikerdogs]

Apparently Shaw and Direct TV have an agreement that they won't "transmit" signals across the US/Canadian border. They really can't control the signal pattern so they essentially agree to not activate dishes on the opposite sides of the borders.

We ran into a similar situation with our Direct TV dish last year when going through Canada. It still worked north of the border, but the reception was spotty and little or no HD. I was about to call them when I read about another Rv'er who had done just that. Not only wouldn't Direct TV help him, they actually deactivated his dish until he returned to the US. Once back in the US he could reactivate the dish.

[Ret Syntst]

I'm sitting in Yuma Arizona right now watching Shaw satellite with 80% signal strength. HD channels in the 300 range come in fine except after 11pm EST (don't know why). I probably could get a higher signal if I could adjust it manually but I'm working with a messed up Nomad 2 system.
Shaw will not support home away from home without an additional charge and definitely not anywhere south of the border. Don't phone for support. They can't help much anyways. I had a problem where I had a good picture but no sound - I just unplugged the receiver for a minute and when it came back on I had sound again. If your receiver needs a refresh do it online. I had to do mine when I got here because some of the channels didn't work.

[georgetown350]

If you have an older shaw/starchoice reciever you will have no issues picking up all your channel s south of the border because the older recievers still feed off the original satellite. You may have issues with the new recievers that feed off the recently launched sattellite. Soon shaw will eliminate the older sattelitte s and be in the same boat as bell. Fyi if you have not used your shaw for a while, it goes to sleep and will need a refresh. You can refresh from the USA by calling shaw and following the automated promps. Just cant get live support if you tell them you are south of the border. To get around that, dont tell them where you are.

[SomeDay]

Feel for you Milom. We are "grandfathered" in home away from home from Starchoice days before Shaw took them over, as they confirmed when I spoke to them this July from Fla. We had service on a smaller older dish and the old star choice receiver no problem. Damaged smaller dish needed replacement this year in Fla and since then we have no TV and it's driving me insane after spending an extra $100 on the new dish, then another $120 to have it UPS to Fla, and we have nothing still. Afraid to throw more good money after bad. We even tried changing out the LNB3 on the new dish to an LNB2 we had unused in a small box down there.

So frustrating as I use the BNN channel daily, and after calling in two "so called professionals" to get it up and working to no avail and them telling us it's due to a dispute going on between Shaw and US providers and they've blocked it. Yet we still hear of others like Bill receiving it.

Any help anyone can give really appreciated. Still have old star choice receiver but a new larger dish - that's all that's changed.

Thanks.

[96 Wideglide]

No expert on this, but from what I've read on this board, it sounds like the new LNB that came with your new dish, has mabe allowed an update go thru to your 'old' reciever.

[Ret Syntst]

The new LNB will not work south of the border. The receiver that is attached to the new LNB will not work south of the border even if you have the old LNB. This is because the receivers have different version codes embedded. The version codes can only be changed by Shaw technical service, they are not affected by auto updates like the one we saw this past summer. Tech service will not willy nilly go about changing V codes without your prior approval. That being said don't be calling Shaw for Tech service when you're south of the border because they can't help you. In order to receive satellite signals you need the old LNB with a receiver that has the proper V code embedded for that LNB. The issue with a larger dish may be that the signal isn't getting to the LNB because of the positioning of the LNB in relationship to the dish. I asked once about updating the dish to something larger and was told it probably won't work and it wouldn't have made much of a difference even if it did work. I have the old 60cm dish, the old LNB and the receiver with the proper V code. I cannot take a receiver that I have at home because it is set up for the new LNB even though it's the same model as the one I have in the motorhome. As far as Shaw shutting down the old satellites, that won't likely happen for a long time because there's likely no additional cost to them to keep them running so why would they.

[RobRV]

If You have an Older Receiver that is married to an old Two Sat quad output LNB you will not be able to use the new Three Sat quad output LNB on that Old Receiver unless Shaw does some magic! This applies everywhere not just south of the border!

The trick is to sort out Your equipment before leaving home!

We are currently in the Palm Springs area ,watching ETCanada on Vancouver channel 336!

We have a 600 Series PVR equipped Shaw Direct Receiver using a Triple Sat LNB! 75 Cm Dish!

We certainly are missing those HD Stations that We receive at Home but can live with what We do get!

We are also carrying an Older Receiver and a dual Sat LNB just in case I have trouble setting up the newer version!

Yes We Tested Everything before leaving Home!

[Mjay]

We are near Lake Havasu City with a 60 cm oval dish, dual LNB and 605 HD receiver. Have 84% signal strength. We are getting all the channel's we had at home, including all the HD's in the 100, 200, 300. Glad we brought it this year!!

[jeanbev]

We used a new Shaw Dish and receiver in Arizona on a tri-pod last year with no problem. With time difference we watched the 10:00 CBC news at 7:00 p.m. Set it up at home before you leave. Get the co-ordinates on the internet from whatever location you happen to be set up and make sure you get info for the proper satellite.

[Diesel Guy]

Hello I have Shaw and used my this year down in the States with no problems

[rallain]

Everything good in Tampa and all my Canadian buds 94% reception can't receive HD channels above 500 but anything below is good to go