*My Thoughts On Cogeco*
The FACTS about Cogeco, My own experience.IMHO
Cogeco keeps raising their prices,anyone not in an upgraded area are subsidizing the ones that are. What if anything would motivate Cogeco to upgrade areas if everyone is paying the same price. I was actually lied to by a tech support rep, He told me that my area is upgraded but the HD channels are not yet available. This is the excuse he used as to why I was not getting a discount from the $5.99 monthly fee. A while back I was told by a rep that there would be a discount coming, that was in the summer.
Cogeco is subing Global HD & E HD taking over American HD channels,guess what people......I do not get those 2 channels in my none upgraded area, the big problem is you miss the beginning of your shows. (I have a call into the CRTC to complain about this, they will get back to me next week).
Recently if you have The Movie Network you now have HBO Canada,guess what people.....I now lost MpixHD , the only show I was interested in that I did not already get was Real Time With Bill Mahr. Now do you think we will get a discount on TMN....LOL I think not.
Since this is my first post, I will just tell you all that I am an experienced user A/V is my thing. I am renting a 6416 which after returning about 3 other boxes they finally got a tech to come out with a brand new 6416. I have the cable hooked directly into my box no spliters & have a very good signal coming in , it has been checked. I have no problems with my Internet,just had a modem replaced but it has been very reliable, I have the Lite version.No provider ever makes exact claims as to speed even with DSL,they say UP TO 10mbps,I am getting what they claim.Go here if you want to test your speed...
http://www.speedtest.net/
I have had sound dropouts very annoying when you are trying to watch your recorded shows. For a while there were constant dropouts breakups with TMN HD.
One thing they should do immediately is give all none upgraded areas Discovery HD & HDnet free of charge. I will be sending an email to Cogeco,& check out DSL reports & post there too.I am tired of talking to CS TS people as they can do nothing.The last time I called The TS guy agreed with everything I said, then Lie #2 from a rep, he actually told me that Mpix & MpixHD is getting cancelled,thats after I told him I now lost that HD channel.
Before the last Firmware upgrade I also had that annoying hard drive problem going to 100%, there is no excuse for all this Tivo has been out in the States for a long time, this is not new technology. They charge around $500.00 or so for these boxes,I have told them this many times ,before you release products & services do some extensive testing , that means Motorola & the people who do the firmware,(they must be hiring people from Microsoft.)
When you look at what is available in the States It just makes you drool, they are light years ahead of us.Even the Bell PVR has advanced, & is a lot cheaper at around $199.00 on sale.I think its time we all said it,WE ARE MAD AS HELL & WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE,stand together & cancel the $5.99 HD access fee. Send them a clear message.
I know that TV is not the most important thing in life,its just the principle of the thing, I want to get what I am paying for otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of having Cable in the first place.
I have been using an HDMI connection to my HDTV for a long time,recently I decided to switch it to Component & Coaxial Digital output from Optical,after reading what some of you said that HDMI is not supported by Cogeco, I also tried analog audio, but this made no difference the dropouts happened regardless. I tend to do my own testing to rule things out. In the year 2008 saying that HDMI is not supported is just ridiculous, & unacceptable, they also did not include an Optical cable in the box,does that mean that Optical is not supported, I think not,As far as I am concerned there is either a signal coming out ot the HDMI jack or not.You can not just blindly accept everything Cogeco feeds you.
I am going to leave it connected with Component as there is no difference in quality
It was mentioned in these forums that there could be some handshake issues with the HDMI, concerning HDCP, & the Cogeco DB I think we all have different systems, Tv's for example, I have a Panasonic LCD,& from day one I was using HDMI.