Everyone surprised by ROgers latest announcements. I know we were.

Let us know about your Digital Cable experiences and Rogers HDTV experiences here.

After being with Star Choice (including HDTV) basically since they launched, I made the switch back to Rogers a week after they launced the HD service.

There were a number of problems including a bad receiver, a few botched service calls and a problem at the Mississauga head-end which caused my ABC and CBS HD channels to flicker on and off making them unwatchable. All outstanding issues have been settled now, but with the Holiday's upon us, I haven't really had time to enjoy the service!

I must admit that I'm pretty impressed with digital cable as a whole. The Wink interactive stuff is really cool, the on-screen menus and IPG are very fast and, in my opinion, the picture quality is every bit as good as - if not better than - the satellite providers.

Still, there are a few oddities that I'd like to see addressed.

- It doesn't digitize the audio on the analogue channels, so you can't leave your A/V receiver set to a digital audio input.

- When you're in the IPG, entering a channel number actually changes to that channel (on Star Choice it repositions the guide to start at that channels which makes a lot more sense). If you're on channel 282 and you want to scan the guide starting from channel 1, you either have to change to channel 1 or hold down the up button to scroll through all the channels (it starts to scroll quickly, but it still takes too much time).

- No aspect ratio/zoom control for the HD outputs, so you're constantly switching between component and regular input on your TV.

- The 2000HD has just about the worse comb filter that I've ever seen! I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't even a comb filter, but a notch filter. The bad news here is that the S-Video output looks horrible when tuned to an analogue channel. So, when I'm 'in control', I set the TV to it's cable input for watching normal TV, S-Video when watching something 'important' like a movie on TMN, and component input for HD.

Hiya,

What is the Wink interactive stuff Johnny?
Also, have you found any DD5.1 content yet?

I'm very impressed w/ the picture clarity
so far.. holding out till I get my bill
before I give it the thumbs up though! :smile:

Sounds like you've got digital cable, so go to channel 33 (CNN) and wait a few seconds. You'll see a stylized 'I' logo appear in the upper left corner of the screen. Press the 'Select' button on the remote and a menu will appear allowing to scroll through the news headlines. Very cool stuff!

Also check out channel 129 (for ordering the new 'digital' channels) and channel 850 where you can sign up for TVcommerce. I don't think it's been used yet, but during a commercial, you might see the 'I' logo where you can actually purchase the item seen in the commercial.

5.1 comes up just fine on 281 - HDABC. I haven't seen it on any of the TMN movies yet (movies that are 5.1 on Star Choice), so I don't think Rogers is offering that yet.

I'm kind of regretting my $1200 investment in ExpressVu right now. (6000 + 4700 + 3100 less $100 programming credit and $200 in bitching credits)

If I was doing it today, I'd definitely go with Rogers because the upfront investment is lower and after all the problems I've had with my 6000, I wouldn't be surprised if it was toast in another six months.

I guess the best thing is that competition should stimulate more offerings from ExpressVU.

Johnny G, I'm interested in the Rogers HDTV and was wondering, I know its got a lot more channels but does it actually broadcast anymore than what's on Star Choice or Vu?

That's a good question Rex and I've thought about this myself. Today the answer is probably 'not really'. Most of the programming of interest is on CBS and ABC and Star Choice and ExpressVu usually carry both these feeds, including when both have HD programming on simultaneously. However, PBS is *always* available on Rogers - definitely not the case with the satellite - and they have some really great stuff to offer.

Also, TMN HD movies seem to be kicking into high gear recently and this knocks out network programming on the 2nd HD channel on both satellite systems. When Rogers adds a full-time TMN HD channel in late January, you'll have the option of watching a movie, without sacrificing any other programming.

Also, consider the Olympics in February on NBC. This programming may pre-empt ABC and CBS programming on the satellite systems, or it may not! The choice is not yours!

Cool.. thanks. I don't have channel 33 (I chose the basic package, plus the HD channels).. but I was able to see the wink demos you mentioned.

Is your HDNBC channel functioning? Mine has been out for a few days now.

I agree with Jonny's points. I too have Rogers HDTV, and am happy with it over all. I would like to see a box that is more stable, and has the ability to zoom, or change the aspect ratio.

As for the wink feature, if you watch Saturday Night Live (NBC), you will notice that they use it there too.

The HDNBC channel has been out for a few days now. People in the Detroit are having problems too, so I would suspect that the problem is at source.

On Jan 1, there are two movies scheduled in 5.1.

Coyote Ugly 7:35 am M4
Coyote Ugly 8:10 pm M2
The World is not Enough 11:25 am M4
" " " " " 6:00 pm M2
" " " " " 1:00 am M1

I would definately like to see more movies shown in 5.1. I don't understand why they can't get the 5.1 audio, since it is almost always there for the DVDs.

The Detroit NBC HDTV transmission is apparently off the air due to technical difficulties, or in other words its a source problem, nothing to do with Rogers. This is explained further over at avsforum.
People in Detroit cant get it either.

I haven't read AVS in a day or two, but last I checked, WDIV was back up and running. The catch is, the HD channel is no longer the main channel, but one of the sub-channels.

Rogers seems to be tuned to the main channel, so they are only picking up the standard feed. Either WDIV has to revert back to the way they were or Rogers has to switch to the sub-channel.

I certainly hope it doesn't take too long to sort out!

I got Rogers HDTV box about 2 weeks ago. The HDTV programs look great. However, the real advantage will be for sports, especially football, hockey, and baseball. I have watched the demo loop that shows samples of a hockey and baseball game and the detail it shows is great.

The problem is there is not much available yet. No HDTV for NFL football and only one Leafs games in HDTV on HDNET which we may get on the 17th January.

However, its a start.

all this sound great BUT how much does it cost compared to the sateliite services , also u need a hd television to take advantage of this right ?

The HDTV portion of Rogers' offering is $19.95/month. This is for the rental of the digital box. The normal digital box is $10.95. These prices are on top of the analogue cable. I'm not sure about the cost of the analogue cable.

Maybe someone can offer the pricing info for the sat providers

The 19.95 cost is not just for the Box but it also includes the HDTV channels with it.
Even at 19.95 a month I cant imagine Rogers making any money from HDTV. The cost of those boxes plus the cost of bringing in those channels must be quite expensive. I'm not even sure if there is any cost benefit for Rogers to offer the service at all, but I'm glad they are offering it.

On 2002-01-24 22:11, digitalcable wrote:
The 19.95 cost is not just for the Box but it also includes the HDTV channels with it.
Even at 19.95 a month I cant imagine Rogers making any money from HDTV. The cost of those boxes plus the cost of bringing in those channels must be quite expensive. I'm not even sure if there is any cost benefit for Rogers to offer the service at all, but I'm glad they are offering it.


They're not looking to make money on it right now. Their own people told us that at this point they're just playing around with it to get it all figured out. They're in a test rollout phase at the moment.

I'm not even sure if there is any cost benefit for Rogers to offer the service at all, but I'm glad they are offering it.
Well, they got me back as a customer paying them $95/mo.

When satellite started, the people in the cities who switched from cable were most likely Rogers most profitable customers. They were the home theatre enthusiast looking to maximize picture and sound quality and they usually opted for the top channel package.

Rogers HD is their way of winning back these people. So far, it seems to be working.

The question is, what percentage of the populace is this type of person? I'm an advocate of rolling out HDTV in our system, but will the costs be worthwhile if we'd get 5% of the satellite customers around here back? Probably not...

Dont get me wrong. I'm glad Rogers has taken some initiative in offering some HDTV to their customers, but thats Rogers. I doubt other cableco's in Canada are going to jump on the Rogers bandwagon at least for quite some time. This is just my opinion. Hey, SHAW has a stinking attitude towards digital in general. They wont even offer Centre Ice, so I doubt they will offer HDTV.