Fibe, Questions..

410489 Views 1146 Replies 247 Participants Last post by elyk, 7 mo ago

Boavista

Discussion Starter · Aug 2, 2010

Im thinking of ditching bell tv after 5 years. Love the service, prices are good but sick of satellite tv losing signal in bad storms. The new Fibe tv service is available in my area.I currently have the fibe25 internet. Ive read that its a max of 4 set top box's. My question is i have 5 tvs. I want to change to fibe tv and i obviously want to watch my 5 tv's so i need 5 set tops. The most set top box's that will ever be on at once is 4 ( 3 sd and 1 hd). Now is it possible to get a 5 box install in this case? the 5 tvs will NEVER all be used at once. Unfortunately this is a deal breaker for me.. I need the 5 tvs or ill have to either settle for bell tv or make the swap back to robbers. I'd call be all ask but i already know ill call 5 times n get 5 different answers so i always come here first

Thanks in advanced folks.

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tvlurker

· #658 · Jan 29, 2014

I just succumbed to Bell's latest offer - get basic (Good) Bell Fibe for a couple of dollars less than I'm paying now for Home Phone, unlimited Canada/US, and 15/10 internet.

We used to Rogers a few years ago, so there are cable drops in 4 rooms - one in the basement, in two bedrooms on the top floor, and in the family room on the ground floor.
I'd prefer to keep the old Rogers wiring for my OTA setup.

The modem is located in a third room on the second floor that does not have a cable drp -- it has a phone line, plus a dedicated cat5 cable that is used to feed the existing SAGEMCOM modem.

We only have one real TV - a 27inch CRT in the bedroom, currently with an OTA STB. When we want to watch HD right now, we watch on a laptop or hook the laptop to a 24inch flat screen monitor.

Eventually, we'l probably get a new flat screen TV. I'm not sure where it will go - in the basement, the family room, or the bedroom.

We only plan to get the 'free' PVR, and not rent any additional receivers, at least to start. (I'd like to keep some room in the budget for an extra package.)

Where should we have the modem located? Right now it's on the second floor in the centre of the house, and it has problems reaching one wing of the house.

If I ask for the modem to stay in my office on the second floor, can I ask Bell to wire a coax or ethernet from that room to the bedroom? The TV in the bedroom is not on the same side of the room as the phone jacks, but it is adjacent to the cold air return (where the Rogers drop is located.) The basement is unfinished, so it is easy to access the cold air ducts to route cables.

I wouldn't want any room-to-room running on baseboards.

If we start by having the modem and TV in different rooms, I'm guessing it will be easier for me to relocate an ethernet or coax drop later on if the TV moves.

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tvlurker

· #660 · Jan 29, 2014

Thanks for the quick reply.

Larry said:
Do you not have a phone jack in your bedroom? If you do , then why not put the modem there and just connect it up to your TV?

There is a jack in the bedroom, but it's on the opposite wall (behind the bed) from the TV. Also, I know my wife would not be too keen on having a wireless modem near her head all night. (or even in the same room.)
Also, since the bedroom is at one end of the house, the wireless reception in the rest of the house would be even worse.

So it sounds like ethernet cable from my office on the second floor, hopefully dropped through one cold air duct to the basement, and then coming up the other to get to the bedroom. This also has the advantage that, should I want to relocate the PVR and TV later on, the same ethernet cable will be long enough for me to relocate it myself to any other likely TV room in the house.

Keeping the wiring on the second floor means going through walls and over doorways, which I'll make sure my wife is there to object to!

tvlurker

· #661 · Feb 3, 2014

Quick update -- the installer arrived around 9:30 and left around 12:30.

It turns out that he doesn't have ethernet terminating equipment, so he only does coax installs. That worked out fine, because he ran two new home runs back to our original cable distribution point: one from the room with the modem, and the other from the room with the TV. This works out really well, since should we decide to move the TV, swapping the feed to another prewired room will be trivial.
The installation would have been quicker, but in the middle of the install, we realized that the phone line had gone dead -- nothing that was done in the house, since it turns out that it had died before the installer got there. So he went out to fix it (while I completed fishing one of the wires. In my spare time, I also vacuumed the open air duct).

One disappointment is that the new Bell Slim remote won't control my 23-year old Panasonic Gaoo TV. We tried both the 0014 Panasonic code and the 0001 all brands code. It's strange since every other universal remote I've ever had has been able to.

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tvlurker

· #665 · Feb 4, 2014

Larry said:
Ok, you got me. What is 'ethernet terminating equipment' ? You mean he didn't have a crimper and the ethernet jacks?

Exactly, he had neither ethernet crimper nor RJ45 connectors.
It turns out that until very recently, he did Bell Satellite installs, but was switched to Fibe TV installs since there are now so few sat installs in my area.

It also turns out that someone else had used his truck the previous day, and the staples he had in the truck were too short to be able to hold onto the RG6 cable. So he ended up tie-wrapping his runs in the basement to the phone line.

tvlurker

· #666 · Feb 4, 2014

Dr.Dave said:
According to the Bell Support Page, you may have to hold down the power button for up to 15 minutes for the more obscure codes.

Yup, did that. Still didn't work.
In any case, Panasonic codes are not obscure, and my TV responds to most of them.

tvlurker

· #669 · Feb 4, 2014

How do you input direct codes on the Bell Slim Remote (made by ruwido.)?
It only seems to let you input a manufacturer code, or an 'all manufacturers' (0001) code, whereupon it cycles through all the codes in some internal list.

tvlurker

· #672 · Feb 4, 2014

Sorry if this discussion is in the wrong thread.

I followed all the standard directions. These directions, as I mentioned, do not input direct codes -- they specify an internal list of manufacturer specific codes. The '0001' code seems to cycle through all internal codes. It's obvious that my Panasonic 29FA10a's code is not on any of the internal lists.
I was just asking if there was some way of specifying a code NOT on their internal list.

tvlurker

· #674 · Feb 4, 2014

I tried that, too. Perhaps this line says it all:

If a correct code is still not found, the remote will control your Fibe receiver only.

tvlurker

· #700 · Sep 11, 2014

The only way to get a deal is through retentions. You'll be speaking to someone in Canada who is empowered to negotiate (within predetermined limits, of course).

It seems like all the cable and phone companies operate this way...

tvlurker

· #774 · Feb 12, 2015

Since you already have coax cable inside the house with Videotron, the Bell installer should be able to reuse those cables for the HPNA connection to the PVR, so you can colocate the PVR next to one of th TVs. Why rent an extra receiver for nothing?

tvlurker

· #779 · Feb 12, 2015

The PVR could be connected via ethernet, but my understanding is that most installers use coax for the HPNA over coax ethernet connection.

They will also run new coax if the required locations do not have them already. However, if you have no basement, I do not believe they are allowed to go in the attic, so you might have to live with either baseboard or outside cable routing if they have to install new cable.
(Note - I believe they will only run coax between the modem and the PVR, and not to other TVs. The other TVs are supposed to use wireless conenctions.)

Also, make sure that your modem is placed in a location that can cover the whole house via wireless. If the garage is off to one side, it might not be the best location.

tvlurker

· #782 · Feb 12, 2015

In my experience, they do snake through cold air return ducts if they are accessible from the basement, but of course that doesn't apply in the OP's case.

tvlurker

· #791 · Mar 2, 2015

Note that the Good Bundle only includes CBC News, CTVNews, and CP24 as news channels (SunNews was there, too, until it folded.) RT, CNN, BNN, MSNBC, BBCWS are not in the Good Bundle.

tvlurker

· #810 · Apr 6, 2015

One thing to know is that if you have a good CRT with an S-video input, the Bell Fibe receiver will output a high resolution picture on the S-Video output (if you set the output to 720 instead of 1080).
On Rogers, you'd need an HD settop box. With Bell Fibe, it's one box that supports SD, ED, and HD.

tvlurker

· #812 · Apr 6, 2015

Since S-Video separates the luminance and chrominance signals, the horizontal resolution has no limit on it imposed by the spectrum organization of the signal on the cable. (There may be a limit in the STB's output electronics, though.)

So although you are restricted to the 480 physical vertical scanning lines, it is possible to theoretically approach the 700-line horizontal resolution of a Panasonic Gaoo CRT.
The S-Video output is active when the Bell STB is set to 720 line output, but inactive when set to 1080.

Whether it makes a big difference compared to using 480i is a good question. (I'm sure I tested it when I set it up last year, but I can't recall. The real reason I set it to 720 was so that I could have HDMI HD output to a computer monitor at the same time I had S-Video output to a CRT)

I certainly have difficulty seeing any difference between the SD and HD channels on the CRT, other than any aspect ratio changes.

I just know it looks better than the S-Video output did on my Rogers SD STB.

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tvlurker

· #936 · May 11, 2018

The sharing is only issue if your internet service alone would need a bonded pair. 20Gpbs Fibe TV should be fine on its own copper pair, and internet only on a second pair would probably be fine, if the copper pair could handle the other ISP's offering.

tvlurker

· #1,146 · 7 mo ago

If I upgrade FTTN to FTTH, will they make me upgrade to the cloud PVR as well? We regularly record some exercise videos that we want to keep for more than a year.

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