Nontheless, at 1080i, I walked up to the screen and recognized the typical artifacts (hard to see from 5 feet away or more) caused by 1080i->1080p->720p->1080i ..... I used to work in the home theater industry so I am familiar with dozens of different artifacts, google my name.
It may be that "along the chain", the material supplied to the Bell Fibe TV network is 720p, and Bell Fibe TV is just passing that 720p unmodified. However, that doesn't mean that at some broadcasting center isn't preconverting to 720p.
Maybe this is true only for some channels (ones that I saw so far).
Does anyone here know how the broadcast flow through Bell?
Example: Entity A (i.e. TV station) supplies video to entity B (i.e. T.V. center at Bell), which supplies video to entity C (i.e. Bell Satellite TV), and then Fibe TV (Entity D) might pull into their VLAN, a mix of Entity B / Entity C video. Different entities might do different transcodes/compresses, or pass them unmodified. Entity D (Fibe TV) might for example, not be aware that Entity B might already be, for instance, converting at least some material to 720p, especially if Entity D is not getting material directly from Entity A.