Hey fellow Novus subscribers, recently I notice that a few channels such as CityTV HD, CTV HD, have intermittent pauses (about 2-3 seconds) on video while audio keeps on going. Happens quite often during a movie broadcast. I'm wondering whether this is my PVR box problem or signal issue from Novus. Could the weather causes poor reception by Novus' satellites?

Asun, i am a shaw sub who has always wondered if i should change to Novus. Do you find Novus pretty good?

I can tell you freezing, sound drops, and macroblocking happens quite often with shaw. If your incident with Novus, only happens once in awhile, thats actually quite good.

Novus is great, especially for their Internet. As ISP, they're bar none the best I've had. As cable provider, they're also pretty good. I haven't followed Shaw's offering so I cannot compare both. I pretty much have sworn off Shaw since they throttled BitTorrent's traffic a few years back.

Yes, the cable quality has been great. The freezing problem has only surfaced the last couple weeks. I've never had that problem before and I'm not sure what macroblocking is. Maybe that's a testament of Novus' quality :) Now if we can get more HD channels.. although I realize Novus probably has the most HD channels already compared to other providers.

I just recently and reluctantly bought an lcd tv because my Sony Trinitron died. I say reluctantly because I was quite satisfied with the Sony and didn't want to get involved with the expense of a digital box, plasma vs lcd, more wires and more remotes. Realizing that I didn't have much choice I went ahead and bought a Sony lcd.

I having been using Novus for about 9 years and have been quite happy with them, using their cable and internet. It's nice to know that someone else is experiencing intermittant breaks. It's been making me crazy. If it is a show that you need to follow the dialogue closely it's especially frustrating since you miss key words or phrases when this happens. I noticed by the start date of this thread it has been almost a year. Is there something I can do to recitify this problem? I'm even noticing that the picture quality and colour can be lousy as well.

If I can't resolve this I'm going to turf this tv and digital box and buy the only tube tv I am aware of at Best Buy.

Hi Asun,

im a Novus subscriber as well.

What i have discovered is that it may not necessarily be the cable signal thats bad, but it could be the box (or one of the tuners on the box if you have a dual tuner).

A good way to isolate the problem is to "record" a show on one of the HD channels (if you can) and then see if it persists. When you are watching a recorded HD channel i find the transmission to be almost flawless.

let me know how you go!

I am another that have noticed increased macroblocking at the same time the audio drops out and like the others it only started happening recently. It may be coincidence but it only started happening after Super Channel HD1 and HD2 was available. I also noticed the same symptoms on Space so it's not isolated to HD

Novus will always make every effort to provide the best TV quality possible.

We are aware of macroblocking issues due to signal compression. So we strive to not compression any signals if not required. As to date, none of our HD signals are compressed, and only about 2% of all our SD signals are compressed.

If you do have problems with macroblocking, freezing, pixilation, etc. We need to know the following:
What channel(s) is this happening on
What time of day it happens
What is(are) the problem(s)
When did you notice the problem(s)

Please provide as much information as possible as this will help us isolate the problems faster and have an answer/resolution for you sooner.

Novus welcomes any type of feedback and will ensure you get the best service we can provide.