Telus TV

[BMW Rider]

I have Telus TV too, we've been with them for a little over a year now with no issues at all. We have three TVs, each with its own box. The downside is that to get the third set, we had to pass on HD. It does depend on the signal strength at your house too, ours is very strong according to the installer who set it up.

I have an aquaintance who is a director with Telus in Networking. He indicated that Telus will soon be able to supply as many as six boxes and HD to a customer. His timeline for this to start rolling out was very soon, likely February or March. He indicated that current customers would be getting the upgrades first.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Yup, they just installed the fibre optics system in my neighbourhood & started the new protocol this month. I can run up to 6 TVs now, not 2 and it doesn't affect my internet speed. Getting 11 mbs on my computer & my wife's laptop (wirelessly) as well. The installer even ran an extra long line to my back so if we ever want to hang out on the deck to let Felicia play in the backyard while we watch tv or surf the net, no problem. And more computers using our connection will NOT slow down my internet speed, so I'm happy.

With Shaw, my internet speed fluctuated constantly, depending on time of day (ie. around 3pm it was superslow).

I now have far more channels, excellent HD sports coverage to watch the Olympics, a free PVR, faster internet, wireless internet for Irene, same digital phone service, ability to watch HD tv out back & will still save about $700 this year.

I know that the earlier Telus TV service was crap. They tried to go too fast before their system was fully up to speed & they used crappy contractors who screwed things up & POed alot of customers.

I tested the internet speed & watched Telus TV at a friend's place first before switching. My internet is almost 4 times faster and so I'm a happy camper so far.

Anthony

[Piscez]

Actually Telus TV just launched Microsoft Mediaroom
Record shows from up to six TVs in the home with a single Personal Video Recorder (PVR)
Watch and record three programs simultaneously, with up to two in High Definition (HD)
Replay, pause, fast forward and rewind recorded shows on any TV in the home
Connect TELUS TV on up to six TVs
Experience picture-in-picture channel browsing and instant channel changes
Plan TV viewing easily and quickly with the new Interactive Programming Guide
Combine High Speed Plus with our new TELUS TV service and surf twice as fast as with regular High Speed

I have Telus Satellite TV which is same a Bell ExpressVu, yes Bell and Telus partnered up on this and the 3G+ cellular network

Telus did try and buy Bell canada last summer and CRTC said they could not as they would become a monopily anyway in The cell service world now there are a couple othe cell service providers out there they will be making anouther play at buying Bell canada. As far as hacking a friend of my departed brother was one of the first in Canada to offer security program evaluating to corporations. He would charge a yearly flate rate and hack thier system tell them what they needed to do to improve on what they had for security software. he built a program called gone in sixty seconds. It did most of the work in the begining. Now he has become a recluse as he hates big corporations as you are just a number to them. He has moved to Whitehorse with his family and is enjoying retirement. Yes hacking is hard but there are alot of people out there that do it just to see what they can get off a persons computer. With Shaws internet system you are sharing a hub with other computers it maynot be as bad as it once was but you still share your network with others. A shared network makes it easer for some one to hack your computer you can do a IP tracerout to determin if others are on a network with you. its not as hard to hack as some believe. Nortons security software is one of the most sold software packages but is is also one of the easer to hack because most people don't know how to set it up properly. Alot of univercities in the satates use it and they get hacked constanly. Good thing student records and test and such are on a seporate network.

Bill

[CDNPiper]

Hey All.. Long time lurker, but this subject is something I have some knowledge about (unlike reefkeeping - still leeching knowledge)

I have had TelusTV for about 4 years. I've had no real problems with it, but I'm in a new area of Edmonton. I recently upgraded to the new Telus TV that they are currently advertising and am very happy.

One of the downsides of it before was the limit to a 3mbps internet connection and 2 Set top Boxes. Now I can have up to 6 Set Top Boxes, all of them HD capable and my internet is 15mbps (when all the TV's are off) and around 7mbps when they are on. I have 3 set top boxes in my house right now and all are HD capable. The PVR is 320gig and ANY tv in the house can access content from it, and even the old school analog TV's can display recorded HD content. Convenient when my kids want to watch Spongebob, I can send them upstairs and they can access the PVR from there when we have people over.

Last night my wife wanted to watch a movie that was on the PVR and I wanted to watch the game. She went to the bedroom and watched it while I was downstairs watching the game live using the PVR. Both were HD and it worked solidly. Also, I told her she HAD to watch the last 5 min of the 3rd so I went upstairs, paused her show, joined the game and rewound it to the last 5... Something I can't do with any other provider right now.

Shaw doesn't offer the "Whole Home PVR" and charges at least $400 for a HD PVR.

Disclaimer: I used to work for Shaw and really can't stand them so I am biased. Nor will I ever have any Shaw/Starchoice products in my home.

Also, it's well known that Shaw uses bandwidth throttling on their internet connection, and Telus doesn't. I'll stick to Telus because I don't need an ISP deciding the priority of the traffic that I want from the internet.

[sphelps]

Not sure on telus but sasktel probably runs a similar system, appears to come through the phone line but I believe it's actually fiber-optics and then cat5 through the home. With current setups in older neighborhoods service is slow but as things get upgraded it's suppose to be way faster than coax cable. They say it's the future but it's still new technology. Not sure how much truth there is to that but that's what the install guys keep saying.

However sasktel sucks! Crappy PVR box, service always crashes, and internet is substantially slower than promised. Cost isn't exactly that great either. Plan on ditching the whole system in the short future. Shaw however isn't much better IMO.

Originally Posted by sphelps

Not sure on telus but sasktel probably runs a similar system, appears to come through the phone line but I believe it's actually fiber-optics and then cat5 through the home. With current setups in older neighborhoods service is slow but as things get upgraded it's suppose to be way faster than coax cable. They say it's the future but it's still new technology. Not sure how much truth there is to that but that's what the install guys keep saying.

However sasktel sucks! Crappy PVR box, service always crashes, and internet is substantially slower than promised. Cost isn't exactly that great either. Plan on ditching the whole system in the short future. Shaw however isn't much better IMO.

Sask Tel uses a similar system as Telus they are testing the fiber to a active filter at present. Thier system works better than the one Telus is using, Telus was going to go with the same system you can have up to 3 TV's with Sack Tel I believe I'll check on that and up date.

Bill

[globaldesigns]

My friend tried it because it was free to start. He is an audiophile, he returned it quite quickly, said it was junk. Said Shaw had a better picture.

Personally I don't have it. One of my good friends works for Telus, installing this stuff. Of course he has it... It looks good to me when I am over there.

There is nothing wrong with Telus TV the quality is just as good as Shaw and no worse than Shaw. They both use digital systems so there is no real difference in picture quality comming out of the converter box. The TV it self may interprit the signal differently and produce a pricture that is different. When I was installing MTS TV we had to setup the picture controls on alot of the TV's as the were out a bit as the TV was interpriting the signal it was getting differently from the other provider.

Bill

[StirCrazy]

If telus runs there tv setup like there phone set up run fast and hard. I will never have another telus product as long as I live excluding a cell phone and if shaw gets into the cell market I will switch that also. but that is because of some underhanded things telus did to me about 10 years ago. one thing I do not like about Telus is there is no such thing as free. if you have a problem you pay for the service call, where with shaw it is all free. I just had shaw over in the fall. they did 3 calls, one to hook up my services, one to rewire my whole house and one to replace the wire from the road to my house. what did it cost me.. nothing. the only reason these things needed to be done is it was original 40 year old wires in my house as the previous owners only had basic cable so there were no problems. I come along and get HD digital cable, internet and shaw phone so some upgrading was required. last time I had tellus out to fix something they charged me 120 for a 1 hour service call.

Steve