Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Hi,

We'll be setting up cable somewhere in Toronto in February. Any suggestions for a good deal?

Not bothered about sports.

Thanks!

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Rogers, I believe, covers the whole city with cable. Bell has Satellite TV which entails a dish and have just come out with FIBE TV, but that is not available in all areas as yet. It performs through telephone lines. I have Rogers, mainly because I don't want a dish stuck to the side of my house. I am well satisfied with Rogers reception/service. I am also led to believe that weather can have an effect on TV reception with Bell Satellite.

The monthly cost will depend on which channels you desire and if you rent digital cable box (es). You may be able to negotiate cheaper rates if you play one company against the other.

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Just an FYI, I was with Rogers, now with Bell. Have had one day in the last 3 years where reception with Bell was effected ( and this was followed the same night by the storm cutting all power ). I didn't like Rogers as I found picture quality poor compared with Bell. I also like the PVR with Bell with the ability to record two channels at the same time ( something at the time Rogers were not capable of - this may have changed ).

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

I've had Rogers for decades and changed to their Digital HD 18 months ago and I purchased the PVR from The Source. It does record 2 channels and I'm perfectly happy with both the reception and the service.
I live in a Condo and can choose between Bell and Rogers 80% of the units have chosen to go with Rogers. I also have their Internet and home phone. It costs me $121/month for all 3 services.`

I dropped Bell after 47 years for my home phone and their Sympatico Internet after 4 years. I found the service had severely deteriorated over the years and their technical help seemed to be of Indian origin and very difficult to understand.

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Where in Toronto?

Get an antenna and free to air HD :)

Worth a try.

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

We have not had cable TV since the early 90s...as for internet....I dumped Bell for lousy service in my area.

We have been with Rogers for internet since 06 without a single hitch...but their days are numbered unless they ditch the download cap. Bell have no caps at the present....hopefully their download speed and consistency has much improved.

Our home phone (basic service) is also through Rogers (no long distance plan for years)...comes with 500 Cdn minutes free. UK gang are all with Talk-Talk and ring here for basically free (they pay VAT only). Use SKYPE if we need too.

Cell phone, my OH uses Rogers Pays as You Go 100 buck top ups....good for a year...unused portion carries over.

Thanks to EXPAT Shield and NETFLIX we now seem to watch more programming via the internet than we watch on ExpressVu...but have no plans to ditch satellite TV.

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Firstly, check where exactly you'll be located. Rogers cable doesn't go further west than the mississauga / oakville border, so you'd be with Cogeco.

Also consider wether you will be bundling other services, for example, home phone, cell phone, and internet. More items in a bundle, in theory, the cheaper it is.

If you're in a new apartment complex you may find they have Bell's new super fast service, they kept trying to sell it to me, but I had everything with Rogers and didn't fancy paying a fair bit in early cancellation fees (primarily for the cell phone) so I stuck with Rogers.

When I started working from home I dumped the internet from Rogers as their business solutions did not offer what I wanted (static IP address, that are actually static IP's and NOT static DNS, they seemed incapable of understanding that a DNS address can be spoofed fairly simply, whereas an IP address was somewhat more difficult, and we had explicitly configured our corporate firewall to deal with IP's and not DNS)

I found Rogers digital TV to be pretty good, I had the VIP package and a stupid number of channels. This was going to a 32" CRT TV, and so not HD, but it gave me access to The Movie Network. I liked the On Demand system, well, I mean the content on offer, the actual design and operation of the interface is very clunky and does make me wonder if it has improved since then (2003 - 2008)

When it comes to internet access, it's down to what you want to do with the connection. If you wanted to download, oh, I don't know, say the latest Ubuntu iso file via BitTorrent, ie; a *legal* use for bit torrent, then you would probably find that Rogers and Bell could well block the common ports used for this, or traffic shape and thus see you're using a BT client and throttle the connection to slow things down. The idea being, if it's so slow to download things, you won't bother, because of course everything you download via bit torrent / P2P is illegal *sigh*

You may also find they don't provide the services you want, for example, unlimited bandwidth at a decent price, thus it could be possible you want to look at third-parties, such as mycybernet and teksavvy.

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

I'd second the bit about checking what's available locally. Our condo block is connected to telus high speed Internet

100mbps connection with no download caps , far superior to anything g Rogers can offer , despite them keep trying to sell us " the fastest Internet " available

We use Rogers for tv. No complaints but , yeah the on demand stuff , the interface looks like it was designed on a BBC micro computer. Decent enough channel selection and HD channels

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Thanks guys x

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Both Bell and Rogers are much of a muchness. Loathable monopolistic companies with scant regard for their customers.

I used to have a Rogers Internet/ TV package, but after they reduced the service for the same cost last year, we booted them for Techsavvy (internet) - cheap and awesome service and Bell, which although still oxygen thieves, at least provide a vastly improved picture quality to Rogers (which apparently is v. important for the other half)

I can't recommend Techsavvy enough as an ISP. Very reliable service, and excellent customer service...

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

And if you do go with Rogers you'll be spending some time trying to operate this wonderful contraption:

http://forparts.ca/images/Rogers.JPG




:scaredhair:




:banghead:




:beer:




Trying to sync the tv/cable/dvd to it is like trying to crack the code on an enigma machine.

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Chuck that out and go for a logitek programmable remote. Much the better solution.

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Oh so true. Here in the Far East we have no choice other than Rogers or Bell. Rogers I hate with a passion for their automated call centre.....'Tell us what you want'....'For the love of god let me talk to a real person........but do offer a genuinely high speed internet service as opposed to Bell (Aliant) who, as it turns out, don't if you live more than 100m from the main drag.

With Rogers, it pays to throw your toys out of the pram every year and threaten to move to another provider. One can usually negotiate a deal paying 50% of the nominal full cost for a year. And re-negotiate every year.

All in all, dealing with Canadian telco/cable/isp's will lead you to contemplate suicide as an alternative, or to become a luddite.;)

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Second that :thumbsup:

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Thanks, I'll check it out. :thumbsup:

Re: Rogers or Bell? Or other?
 

Or a Brookstone Remote Pillow (Cushion) I got one for Mr Pretty Flowers for Christmas and he loves it. But then he's a nerd who bought me (him) a one terabyte TV media centre for Christmas. But heck, I have enough room now to store every HD episode of Battlestar Galactica...

http://www.brookstone.com/sofa-pillow-universal-remote-control.html