The Mint.com blog offers up a great info-graphic explaining why you don’t need that $250 monster cable to go with that PS3 and HDTV. Its succinct and to the point, and if you have recently purchased an expensive cable, you need to take it back and buy the cheapest HDMI cable that you can find.
With all of the recent changes on the Canadian television landscape, its hard to tell what is currently going on. On September 1st, the CRTC ruled that Cable, Satellite and IPTV services would have to remit a 1.5% fee to the new “Local Programming Improvement Fund”. At the same time, the CRTC also opened the door for “fee for carriage” which basically translates to around $6/month per household to pay for the channels that currently, and will continue to show commercials! So the recap, you will be paying more money per month for television service in Canada, but you will not bet getting anything in return.
Keep reading after the jump….
Hot on the heels of the 1.5% tax that consumers will have to pay to the Local Programming Improvement Fund, and fee for carriage that is sure to see our Cable and Satellite bills ballon even further, the CRTC has stuck it to the consumer once again. Effective September 1st, Canadian broadcasters are now allowed to air as many commercials as they want, previously, broadcasters were limited to 15 minutes per hour of advertising. I have a feeling that this slipped past the media as two of the Canadian broadcasters, Global and CTV own the newspaper and TV news outlets.
A Vancouver photographer (Andrew Ferguson) captured this image on his commute today.
Image Copyright Andrew Ferguson
The ad shows a photographer with an SLR taking a picture of a security camera, with the tagline, “Report the suspicious, not the strange”. You can examine the large image here. This will be a huge waste of police resources dealing with lame complaints about photographers.
We have been hearing about this happening in cities such as New York, and London, but now its happening in our own backyard. Translink may not be aware, but the last time that I checked, Photography is Not a Crime! I hope that this is a mistake, and doesn’t become more common because of the up coming Olympic winter games. Unfortunately, I’m expecting to see more of this, with the police trying to extend their powers using the games as an excuse. Its a slippery slope, and we are just getting started with less than a year to go before the games.
If you want to see the advertisement in person, you can see it at waterfront station. Anybody interested in a Skytrain station photowalk to take pictures of security cameras? Leave a comment, SLR’s only, and you need to wear a hoodie, and carry a camera bag.
Is it just me, or has Bell dropped the ball lately with the program guide? Most of the shows I watch have only a generic description and nothing else, causing the PVR to either ignore the event, or record duplicates of the same show. This only started happening a lot at the beginning of October, and has caused me to set all of my times to record “All Episodes” and then manually “skip” the duplicates.
Shaw Cable on the other hand, seems to have their guide together, and it has correct info for almost every show that I checked. Now if only they had the same quality to their HD content that Bell has, and switching would almost be a no brainer.
I am at the end of my Bell contract, and extremly frustrated by the guide, and very tempted to switch now. So my question to the readers of this site is: Have you been having issues with the program guide? If so, please add a comment below with the symptoms that you have been seeing. Bell does read this site, so perhaps somebody will see this and take action!
Rant over.
Hugh at Digital Home has released his updated report listing what HD channels are available to Canadian consumers. I look forward to this report, but I find my self starting to feel as if the grass is greener on the other side of the country (I’m on the west coast), especially considering that Cogeco is now offering 25 HD channels in their Ontario line up.
[My commentary on the report follows after the jump]…
Well today is December 20th, and that means that Showcase HD and National Geographic HD have launched in Canada. If you subscribe to Rogers Digital Cable, Shaw Digital Cable, or Star Choice Satellite, you can recieve both of these new HD channels.
Notice someone missing? Bell ExpressVu does not yet have National Geographic HD, or Showcase HD. Currently, both channels are expected to launch on Express Vu sometime around Feburary 28th 2007. This comes as a surprise that Express Vu has not launched these two channels, given that they are sure to be quite popular, and even more surprising because Express Vu is the High Definition leader in Canada.
I’m not sure what Bell is thinking, but they must have their reasons. Even after the addition of these two new channels to the competitors line ups, Express Vu is still in the lead with the most HD channels in Canada.
One more thing, Kenny vs. Spenny is going to be shown in HD.
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