I just talked to a Rogers tier 2 level customer support rep, and he read me a statement saying they are employing compression techniques as has been done by various other cable providers including those in the United States, and currently they feel like they are not breaking any CRTC policies, no matter how bad the picture is right now on any HD channels due to compression. He didn't talk about bandwidth issues, or bit rates, or anything too technical. He did refer to the newspaper article that was published the other day, and he mentioned there were some inaccuracies in that artcile, but didn't elaborate on what they were.

I asked him why no one was notified that this compression would be happening, and all he wanted to do was read me the generic statement about Rogers compressing signals, and had no further comment, as that is their stance on the issue right now.

He stated that if Rogers is breaking CRTC policy, they will hear about it and cease compression of HD signals (at least that's what this rep said).

Again, he just wanted to basically stick to his little blurb about what they are doing and how they are not breaking any policies, and that's it.

Well I just took a look at HDNet and HD Discovery here in Ottawa and honestly I could not see a real difference. Maybe it has not started here yet?

Well, you all can be assured that I will be paying attention to all of the file sized that are created from my firewire setup.

I will also be very particular when examining any shows that are on the affected channels.

A good comparison would be if someone has a chance to watch/record something Over The Air (OTA) and also record the same broadcast on Rogers to compare the image quality and file sizes.

The NHL games are crap HD from NJ and Pitt. The Jays game on HDSNT is OK but I've seen better. HDNet is usually the best and it looks a little off.
NHNAT is not as sharp.
Where do we start the petition?

yeah the Sens v Pitt game is really poor, looks more like upcoverted SD!

Rangers v. Devils on TSN is alright..better definittion and color contrast.

BUT neither CBC or TSN is on the list of channels that are being further compressed....or am I missing something?


HD is still in its infancy in Canada, even for our hockey.

Well, if it is bad enough, I will demand that I get the extra HD channels for FREE as they are not HD anymore. :mad:

If there is no satisfaction there, I will sign MY petition. It is the one that says "Cancel my service and come get your crap!". :p

Anyone getting severe pixelization on HDCBC? It's huge here in North York

Nope. Flames v Sharks looks AMAZING. Best HD of the 4 games tonight.

Whatever it was, it's now fixed..there is no pixelation in the Calgary game...and i concur this is by far the best PQ of the night..

Yes...I've been having major problems with CBC HD all night. The pixelation appeared to go away at the start of the Calgary game but it has reared its ugly head again. I'm in Scarborough.

btw, to stay on topic, I have not noticed any drop in picture quality at all on any of the channels now being compressed.

How do you compress an analogue channel?
Provide free D/A converters to your entire subscriber base. These devices are available but not currently used. They convert a digital tier to analog for reception on conventional CATV capable TVs. (Similar to the way that cheap converters once converted CATV signals to UHF on older analog systems.)

I spit on Rogers and their compression!

Provide free D/A converters to your entire subscriber base.

You can get them for around $50 at Best Buy stores in the U.S.

Well, I recorded some shows from Discovery HD, HDNet and NatGeo HD and the file sizes are still coming in at a full 8 GB per hour. The image quality is also stil very high so I am not seeing any subjective issues either.

I am wondering if they are compressing for both Ontario and Atlantic Canada or just Ontario.

Well, my observations from last night.

The hockey game (Ottawa/Pitt) was of the poorest quality I've seen. Pixillation with every movement, and it looked worse than upconverted SD. The Jersey game was okay, but not close to the best I've seen.

I tuned into TMN and it was a night time scene. Pixels were flashing terribly, and it looked really poor. Daytime scenes were good though.

I watched the American Idol special on CTV and noticed macroblocking, sound and pixel dropouts throughout the show. I know CTV isn't on the compression list, but it seemed a little more than coincidental.

The Bluejay game looked great and had no issues.

All in all, a bad night for HDTV.

Well, I recorded some shows from Discovery HD, HDNet and NatGeo HD and the file sizes are still coming in at a full 8 GB per hour.

As sensualpoet noted many posts ago, they haven't started compression yet.


To those who are complaining, especially about games on CBC, SportsNet and TSN which aren't being compressed, what are you looking at? I think some folks just see what they want to see.

CBC looked just fine last night when I popped in a few times. Well almost fine, I popped in once when Don Cherry was on ... I'm surprised that jacket didn't break down the cameras ...

But why are we discussing CBC here? It's not on the list to be compressed? Sure it's going to macroblock occasionally - all HD channels do this with fast moving action if they are only using 20 Mb/s - which is really borderline.

I'll have to disagree with you on this one Hugh. I also noticed the Pens vs Ottawa was pretty awfull (for HD) last night. Not horrible, but i'd say the source wasn't HD (probably was, but it didn't look like it).

Having said that, i'd guess it was being transmitted poorly from the source as Calgary vs SJ was much better. I doubt it has anything to do with the compression that they were supposed to start, but i tis quite a coincidence. I wanted to compare game time vs Don Cherry time to see if there was a difference (source from Pits vs source from studio), but i was called away from my TV. Maybe someone else did this comparison?

I'm not even sure if this compression thing is supposed to happen here in New Brunswick, but i did notice some HD channels (on occasion) aren't what they used to be. Probably all just coincidence, let's wait and see what happens.

Okay Acadian, you're seeing compression artifacts even though they haven't started the compression yet. That's pretty impressive!

One more time for everyone else, See my post #137 and post #115. It has not started yet! This is also confirmed by que3jxp is his post on the previous page.

Like so many things to do with Rogers, it has likely been delayed.