Keep reading after the jump….

Since September 1st. The CRTC has recieved 1000′s of letters from upset Canadians demanding that they not be taxed in order to fund a bailout of the big two Canadian Broadcast networks (CTV and Global). On September 17th, the Heritage Minister asked the CRTC to review their decision and consider the consumer in the debate.

With the above said, the CRTC still needs to hear from you! Please send your MP, the Heritage Minister and the CRTC a letter or email expressing your opinion. CTV and Global are lobbying very hard to try and charge you money for a service that is supposed to be ad-supported. (You are actually doing them a favour by watching on Cable and Satellite as they no longer need to build out terrestial transmitters…. think rabbit ears).

Shaw Cable has a great website with sample letters that you can send to your MP in the mail and via email (remember, postage to an MP or Minister does not require a stamp).

Please speak up!

So as a consumer what are you paying for when you support your local station?  Not much, your going to have to pay to recieve those signals into your home, saving the broadcasters from having to build out more broadcast towers, and since you are paying for it, you will be force fed as many commercials as they feel like giving you.  That means we’ll likely see the typical 90 minute movie cut down to one hour and slotted into a two hour time slot.

Its time for Canadian consumers to stand up and write the CRTC asking them to allow us to pick and choose which stations we want! I don’t want to pay for Global, or CTV if they are going to force me to hit fast-forward on my DVR more than I already do. I’m tempted to dump my cable service entirely! As consumers we are paying more and more every month for less and less service.

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.

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.

[My commentary on the report follows after the jump]… 

A cursory glance at the chart shows Rogers and Bell ExpressVu neck and neck, they don’t have all the same channels, but with ExpressVu not adding any new channels in the last couple of months, Rogers could take the lead in Canada. ExpressVu needs to pick up a few more channels if they want to remain the dominant HD player in Canada. ShowCase HD has been out for quite a few months, and according to the charts, it has a medium ammount of content, and would be a great asset. (this is unlike A&E HD which is a total waste of HD bandwidth stretching an SD signal to HD — not any fault of Bell I might add).

Shaw cable has been making a few strides forward, which is good to see. I havn’t looked at a Shaw HD box in a while, so I am not sure if they have resolved some of their bandwidth issues yet. I do know quite a few Shaw employee’s who are on ExpressVu simply due to the ammount of HD Content.

Videotron and Cogeco have the most HD french channels, but who really cares about that, its a waste of bandwidth for most of the country. (kidding really).

SaskTel Max is really impressive, 27 HD channels over their ADSL 2+ based network is very impressive! Considering that SaskTel serves a much much smaller market than TELUS, they are the most technologically advanced ILEC in Canada. Telus really needs to take a look at SaskTel and roll up their sleves and get to work upgrading their network. Right now, you can’t really buy TELUS TV. I would like to review Telus TV once it makes its appearance in my area.

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.

Ballmer:

“Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered,” Ballmer said. This “is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability.”

Microsoft is giving Novell $440 million, and Novell is giving back $40 million to pay for patents that it thinks Linux is infringing upon.

Thanks Novell! You sold out the whole Linux community, who’s work you have been busy trying to use to resuscitate your dying business. No one who has been using Linux for more than one year was surprised by your actions, but now we have caught you with your hand in the cookie jar. And we have the proof we need to tell people why they should not use SuSE Linux.

At least I do not have to rebuild any of my servers or workstations, none of them run SUSE, if they did, I would have already formatted and re-installed with a better distro a long time ago.

If you use Linux, please boycott SUSE. If you currently use SUSE, please try a free alternative such as CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora. My personal combo is CentOS for severs, Ubuntu for Desktops.

[Thanks to BoingBoing for the Ballmer quote.]

The reason this is such a huge suprise to me is that the CRTC actually made a decision that is going to benefit viewers like us. Almost all of the Canadian networks (CBC, Global, CTV, SportsNet, etc) were opposed to this. Likely due to the fact that they are finally going to be forced to produce content in HD.

The previous federal liberal government pressued the CRTC to postpone making a decision on HDNet for the past three years.
No idea as to when we will see HDNet in our programming guides, but it is refreshing to hear that they have been added to the “list”.

Good move CRTC, I applaud you.

[via Digital Home Canada]

The media found these plans on the city of West Vancouver website and they were quickly removed. Now the Eagle Ridge whack jobs claim that the plans for the Golf course were “A Campbell Government mistruth”. I don’t think so!

A lot of these protesters live near the bluffs, and obviously have something to loose. (Property value for one) by having the highway so close to their homes. It bothers me that they would use the enviroment as their cause when it is obviously a case of NIMBY. A small group of residents would rather the provice spend an additional 100 million dollars just so we don’t ruin the views of their multi million dollar homes.

Kudo’s to the supreme court of BC, the West Vancouver Police, and the Province of British Columbia. Its nice to see a goverment that dosen’t cave in when approached by the smallest of special interest groups. I for one prefer to see the needs of the few put aside for the majority, and the future economic prosperity of the province.
I will say however, that I do feel somewhat sorry for the few old hippies that came out from Vancouver to be arrested. They were told that they are trying to save the bluffs for enviromental reasons, when in fact it is actually just rich West Vancouver people who want to save their property value. I noticed that a lot of West Vancouver protesters decided not to get arrested, instead letting the real enviromentalists take the fall instead.