What i dont understand is why Rogers switched the feeds to Buffalo, when other cable companies like Cogeco, Source, Mountain and a few others continue to offer Detroit feeds, while their primary SD feeds are Buffalo. Dont the same CRTC rules apply to every cable system?? Wouldnt the others have to follow suit?

What i dont understand is why Rogers switched the feeds to Buffalo, when other cable companies like Cogeco, Source, Mountain and a few others continue to offer Detroit feeds, while their primary SD feeds are Buffalo. Dont the same CRTC rules apply to every cable system?? Wouldnt the others have to follow suit?Presumably Rogers was the first to do so - the others will have to eventually switch to Buffalo in the near future.

Presumably Rogers was the first to do so - the others will have to eventually switch to Buffalo in the near future.

The CRTC provides for Cable companies to use "alternate feeds" if they can show that the mandated closest OTA signal is an "impaired" one. In the case of Buffalo if "lake effect" impairs the signal then Rogers could request using another origin and the CRTC would approve. Now, whether “incompetence in the control room” would be considered an impaired signal would be a bit doubtful.

I think in the case of HD being so new and there not being an “all-round level playing field” as far as signal quality goes they might at this point in time get the go ahead to use an alternate source to Buffalo.

Another very important factor that should be taken into account is the advertising aspect where many local advertisers buy time on Buffalo stations. This does influence how things are handled.

Thank heavens for the HD time shifting from the west coast. Don't let anyone take that away from us!

Here's a reply I just got back from Rogers after I'd complained about the problem with Threshold last night :

...."We are sorry to hear that the programming which was on these stations
was interuppted by the station. Please note that the local commercials
and news promotion comes from the station itself rather than Rogers.

At this time we are unaware of any plans to move our HD stations from
the Buffalo affiliates. We have noted your dissatisfaction with the
issue and we apologize for any inconvenience....."
(I'd suggested they switch HD providers to either Boston or Detroit)

I havent read all the posts on this thread, so please forgive if it was mentioned....

has anyone noticed that the Buffalo HD channels play WAY MORE commercials during any given show???
I notice it when i PVR something... for example, 2 and a half men on mondays, i always miss the last little bit during the credits.. this is despite the fact that the recording is from 9:00 to 9:30... most channels finish the show with credits by :29 or :59...... it is very annoying...
I usually miss the "next weeks preview" as well for the same reason...

Tonight on Rogers Toronto, CBSHD CSI:Las Vegas, at least 4 corrupt video segments, 2 audio drops and something new, a LOSS SIGNAL INPUT flashed at least 5 times in the span of a few seconds. I had to laugh at that, remember the old rogers commercials, Dude is watching static tv and the tv screen says loss of signal and the narraor says "You don't get this on Cable." Guess, what. I do now. I understand this is prob more due to buffalo station rather then Rogers. I called them and they said it must me my box blah blah blah. I explained to them the issues myself and others are having and they said, oh, yeah, um..... we can send a tech out to check your lines. I hung up.

I find it's generally a waste of time phoning - they always say you should reboot your stb regardless of what the problem is. Then if that doesn't fix the problem they want to send a technician round.
Best is to email digitaltvsuppport@rci.rogers.com - you will get a basic reply back but at least the fault is documented. When you email a further fault, just reply to their previous response so everything is appended. At some point someone has to notice that these are not isolated problems (I would hope!).

The first line CSRs are next to useless when it comes to reporting a problem that doesn't come up on their screen. As soon as the first CSR asks me to reboot my STB, etc. I always request a second level tech since this is a "known" issue and is not a result of my STB.

E-mail - same thing - you get the first canned response and then you send it back asking for "second level" so that they can properly document the issue. Once you get an "uncanned" response, then you know the item has been documented. If you simply get the response "please call us", then nothing has been done.

You can tell if the response is "uncanned" if it speaks directly to your problem.

The first line CSRs are next to useless when it comes to reporting a problem that doesn't come up on their screen. As soon as the first CSR asks me to reboot my STB, etc. I always request a second level tech since this is a "known" issue and is not a result of my STB.I tried that the other day, when the first level person told me the reason I wasn't getting HD ABC Buffalo, is because I didn't subscribe to the HD Speciality pack. She said that she couldn't pass me to anyone else, and that she could have someone phone back in 24-48 business hours. And she stressed that they were business hours, not total hours ... so it could be a week ...

E-mail support is equally useless ... normally they e-mail back a canned response that has no relation to the question, no matter how simple.

Is it me, or has Rogers support gotten much, much worse in the last few months. They didn't use to be such complete morons!

Nick

Well it's happened again. Channel 527 AND channel 528 went blank just after midnight tonight right in the middle of Letterman. I phoned in and the csr confirmed that the channels were blank at his end so he put a 'ticket' in. I've also emailed Rogers again.......This time I suggested that they be able to switch to an alternate feed when Buffalo goofs like this - like Detroit, and then leave Detroit on the channel instead of going back to Buffalo.

Somehow I doubt anything will change.

What an interesting futile waste of time - I phoned the Office of the President! I spoke with some guy who didn't seem too keen to be talking with me. Didn't give his name either. Anyway, right from the start he said it was the first time he'd ever heard there was a problem with Rogers HD service out of Buffalo. On questioning him, he admitted that even though he had HD service, he rarely watched TV at all. Thus has never seen the problems we've all been noticing.
As the complaints are of a technical nature he said I should talk to someone in the technical area who would be more familiar with HD. He noticed there were two outstanding tickets on my file - basically from when I phoned in to complain CBS and ABC channels were blank. In spite of me saying that wasn't the problem, but the ongoing poor service out of Buffalo, he switched me over to a 'technical advisor'. This turned out to be some woman who had no idea about the technical aspects of HD and could only 'get someone' to investigate what was on the outstanding tickets. Again, saying it was Buffalo that was the problem and why not switch back to Detroit, I was switched over to someone else, now in 'business programming' or something.
This guy was much more approachable and said he had no idea who authorized the switch to Buffalo from Detroit and that he himself was unable to do anything about that. He did say that if there were technical or operating issues with the Buffalo stations, I should phone them rather than Rogers as the signals are just sent over the Rogers network as they're received. He gave me the phone numbers of the four stations:

ABC 716-845-6100
CBS 716-874-4417
NBC 716-849-2222
FOX 716-773-7531

He also said they all had web sites and one could email them too. I found this to be a waste of time as neither WKBW nor ABC Network ever replied to my emails concerning switching into SD in the middle of HD shows.

Meanwhile, no one has yet written back in regards to the snail mail letters I sent to Rogers Oct 25th and last Friday. Maybe it takes a month or so to read all the letters that must pile in.....lol

The letter I sent to the Office of the President over a year ago never got a reply. So don't hold your breath.

I should have responded to this thread earlier... I too am very disappointed with the quality of the Buffalo HD channels. Lost was a joke tonight.... picture breakups... blocking... freezing, going to black. I switched over to CTV thank goodness but if I didn't have that for a backup, or if I had Pvr'd the Buffalo feed I would have been up the creek.

Yes, Lost was a total waste of time on HDABC from Rogers. I too switched over to the non- HD feed and then zoomed (it's just not the same !) .

Lost was a joke tonight.... picture breakups... blocking... freezing, going to black.


I wonder if OTA ABCHD Buffalo was the same?

Yes, Lost was a total waste of time on HDABC from Rogers. I too switched over to the non- HD feed and then zoomed (it's just not the same !) .Why not switch to CTV-HD. Looked fine to me. (recorded both, haven't watched yet, but I saw how bad ABC was when I checked it).

Nick

^ I, too, have given up on the U.S. feeds and tape all my shows off the Canadian HD channels. LOST was flawless last night on CTV-HD.

One thing I did notice was that on the guide, LOST ran from 8:55-10:00pm on CTV-HD, but 9:00-10:05pm on ABC-HD. Did anyone else notice that? As far as I can tell, the show still ran 1 hour long on CTV-HD. Perhaps the guide now actually reflects the 2 min. over-run on the U.S. feed?

Yeah I'm getting a little fed up with the Buffalo stations. Wife is starting to hate it too and says that the HD channels are not worth it because of this. Seems like it's a weekly thing that Lost & Invasion are screwed up with audio drops and heavy picture breakup. Doesn't Rogers see that this affects them as a business? Man I would sure have a hard time trying to sell HD to someone when channels like this are worse than a crappy analogue signal. Personally, I think I'm going to switch my recordings to the Canadian ones since those seem to be more reliable. BTW, it's not just Lost & Invasion that have screwed up for me. I know that I've lost an episode of Alias, Night Stalker, and Boston Legal because of this.

Lobo

Geez, nfitz, you're smarter than me ! Forget about CTVHD - I have a natural aversion to using their signal since it was never as good as the U.S. feeds in past months (+ the ugliest bug known to mankind).
I should have thought to check it out !

The ugly bug is now gone, replaced with a proper CTV semi-transparent bug.