2 weeks so far...
Well, 3 weeks ago Bell rang me up to let me know that Fibe was available (Woodbine/Danforth area), and it just coincided with our basement reno and upgrade from SDTV's so we decided to give it a go. Better to get them to run their cabling before the drywall goes up.
Seems like the same deal as most, 2 years PVR, $200 off installation, Fibe 12, etc.. we have home phone and our cell phones with bell as well, so I'm sure some more discounts will kick in as well.
Called Rogers to cancel, I explained where I'm going, and they pretty well said "Oh.. well, sorry to hear that. We'll send out your final bill for the remainder of the 30 days, have a nice day. Not a single attempt from the retention department to get me back, despite me looking to upgrade to HD and new internet. Easiest cancellation ever.
The installer was great, new line from across the street all the way in (DSLAM is at the end of my street), new coax everywhere through the basement and upstairs (drilling holes through concrete), poor bugger was here for over 8 hours straight.. heheh.. got my $59 installation's worth.
At the moment we just had a 26" LCD, and a 32" CRT. The picture was amazing on both, even the CRT.. way better than Rogers in terms of clarity.
This just pushed us into buying a 37" LCD last week to replace the 32", as the tube is starting to go (black dot in the middle of the screen). The guide interface is really great (takes up the whole screen!), everything's crystal clear, the Search function and PVR usage on any TV is priceless, and the internet is blazing at 1.5MB/s, even over wireless G and N.
And just in time to see the last 2 episodes of the Walking Dead in HD..
The only qualms are...
Channel setup is different than Rogers, which my wife is not impressed about, as we've been used to that for years.. Thankfully I can program a favourite channel list to represent the original Rogers 60 or so channels, and customize the main list to take out channels we'll never use. However, I do love that if you are watching a SD channel, just add a 1 to the beginning of the channel number to get its HD equivalent. Makes the transition so much easier.
I think the PVR is acting up, I've had to reboot it 3 times for different reasons..
- One day I told it to record a show, it says "Recording" but nothing shows up in the show list. Going to the guide, it tells me it "Will Record". Rebooting reveals the show, finally, recorded up to that point. This was just after I cancelled two recordings of the same show (one in SD, one in HD) so it might have gotten confused a bit.
- We were watching CTV news one night, and it froze. I could go to other channels and they worked, but going back to CTV froze that channel's screen. I could go into the guide, and it showed CTV playing in the PIP box it had. Rebooting fixed it.
- One night the audio and video started pausing/skipping every 5 seconds or so, regardless of the channel. Rebooting fixed it.
I called Bell, who advised me to keep an eye on it, and if more issues crop up they'll replace the PVR.
At least talking to the Bell rep has been pleasant, I'm sure they want to keep as many new customers happy while they boost the Fibe TV product around the neighbourhood. The installer told me that they're not as busy installing FibeTV as they'd like.
I for one am loving it, no regrets here. The provided remote is a great universal.. control my stereo for sound, TV for screen settings, all the while controlling the PVR. I have a programmable Harmony 550, but I've ended up using it very little lately.