I ordered Speed Racer for the kids. The movie was pretty much what I expected, but the video quality was worse. It was fine in the slow (dialog) parts, but during the action sequences I saw a lot of pixellation. Nothing major that made the movie unwatchable, but I'm paying a significant premium ($7.99 up from $5.99 is almost a 34% hike) and becasue of that this is not at all acceptable.

I have not watched many movies in HD yet. I distinctly remember Transformers being better, but that one was PPV (no on-demand), so perhaps there is a difference. Is this normal and, if not, has anyone tried getting their money back?

I would certainly ask for a refund.

Was the pixellation the signal loss kind, green/white blocks randomly scattered, or the lack of bandwidth kind, colours correct but large areas were squares especially where there were moving edges?

Lack of bandwidth, for sure. That's why I was thinking VoD might be different from PPV, since there is a channel allocated (through the entire network) for PPV.

Speed Racer looked great in HD on my Apple TV.

I wonder if they have a VOD encoded version of the movie that uses less bandwidth than the PPV/regular version? That would certainly account for pixellation.

Macroblocking (not pixellation) is certainly normal on HD programming with a lot of movement on screen.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17715

If you search for rogers macroblocking bandwidth or some similar terms, you'll find plenty of previous threads.

57, while I don't disagree about the diagnosis, I certainly don't think it should be considered "normal" when you're paying $7.99 a pop. I can rent the same movie at Blockbuster for $2 less and keep it for 2 nights instead of just 24 hours. Unfortunately (for me) I'll spend the savings in gas getting to the store and back (twice).

Nevertheless, when I am paying a premium I expect premium value in return. I didn't and I sort-of got my money back -- credit for one free HD movie. If anything worth watching comes out on HD-PPV (the non-VoD variety) I'll use the credit. Maybe VoD will do better once they get rid of the analog channels and free up some b/w, but until then it's not really worth it.