September 9, 2001.
I was "connected" to the Bell ExpressVu satellite service on August 7, 2001. Since then, I have noted quite a few interesting facts about Canadian satellite service in general, including plenty of opinions on the Internet from DBS subscribers in both Canada and the United States. I offer here an ongoing list of items that may be of interest to you if you ever decide to go the "dish" route one of these days. New items will be added as they are completed, so don't be surprised if some items have no text.
Differences between Canadian and American satellite services
About the movies (both speciality channels and pay-per-view)
About having ExpressVu installed in a residential complex
The contract I signed with Bell ExpressVu for our condo building contains a non-disclosure clause which means I can't reveal the exact details of the service we signed up for beyond what's already available in the sales brochures. But what I can tell you is that it's worth looking into if you're the owner or administrator of a residential building and you want to avoid dish clutter.
Basically, both Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice can offer full satellite service to residential buildings with a single dish. Since the satellite service provider uses their own distribution equipment attached to the existing wiring in the building, each subscriber has their own satellite decoder and their own choice of channels, so no one is locked into a "common package" they don't want. Since only one dish is required to provide service to anyone who wants it, this eliminates any "dish clutter" on the building itself. Most often, you might not even see the dish on the roof of the building if the dish is strategically positioned. And if anyone wants to stick with their existing cable service, they can do so with the assurance they won't lose their cable service with the arrival of the satellite service.
Bell ExpressVu offers many incentives to sign up for their residential complex package. In our case, the deal was too good to pass up and there was overwhelming support behind the project. Already our building has quite a few new subscribers who are very pleased with the service. I'm certainly pleased with the image quality which has turned out pretty much as I expected it i.e. much better than cable. More on this later.
My only real complaint is Bell ExpressVu's advertising literature. For some strange reason, most of their advertising brochures aimed at residential complex installations are unusually dull and depressing. Their idea of a residential building is a big grey cement monstrosity that looks more like a high security prison complex. Our building is an old textile factory made of brick and wood, a sharp contrast from a grey-looking sterile building.
For most people, the satellite equipment manufactured by Echostar is easy to understand and operate. The one exception would be all those people whose VCRs are constantly flashing "12:00". You can only do so much.
The model 2700 receiver contains just about everything a person will need to enjoy satellite television at a reasonable cost, and with a small learning curve. In my case, I grabbed the remote from the hands of the technician and just went at it without having even read the instruction manual! After discovering a few extra features not mentioned in the sales brochures (i.e. browsing show titles without leaving the channel you're watching), I can honestly say the receiver is reasonably designed for what it needs to do. But do note that the model 2700 will eventually be replaced with the new model 3100 satellite receiver. The 3100 has the same features as the 2700 with the addition of browsing the full channel guide without leaving the channel you're watching, and the ability of changing channels much more quickly than the model 2700.
Now the shortcomings. First of all, not all the decoders have a digital audio output. With the arrival of home theater receivers that can decode just about any digital signal pumped into it, these "sound studios in a box" can easily handle the digital stream coming from a satellite receiver. If you connect the digital output of a satellite receiver into the digital input of an audio receiver, the responsibility of decoding the digital signal rests solely on the audio receiver. In one step, the signal is decoded, amplified and sent to the speakers with little or no degradation in sound quality. Now what happens if you only connect the analog outputs of the satellite receiver to the analog inputs of the audio receiver? The satellite receiver decodes the digital signal and turns it into an analog signal. This signal is then sent to the audio receiver which has to convert it back into a digital signal so that it can properly manipulate it. Finally, the processed signal is converted back to an analog signal to be sent to the amplifier and the speakers. Compared with the "direct" approach, we now have three stages where the sound can be seriously degraded. This degradation can easily be avoided with the addition of a digital audio output on the satellite receiver. Unfortunately, this "extra option" will end up costing you $150 extra for the soon-to-be-outdated model 4700 receiver. Quite a lot of money for a part that probably costs only twenty five bucks to add.
The second shortcoming? The system is a bit susceptible to a phenomena called "rain fade". This situation occurs during really bad rainstorms where the sheer mass of a torrential downpour is thick enough to block off the signal coming from the satellite. Although the anti-satellite commercials from the cable companies make this seem like a frequent problem, my encounters with a loss of signal have been few and far between. In most cases, the rain fade only lasts a few short minutes (my current record is six minutes), the time needed for a thick cloud to move out of the way of the satellite signal. This slight annoyance is not isolated to Echostar equipment; even the Star Choice service and line of receivers are affected by this phenomena.
On the whole, the system is very reliable and easy to use. Add in a digital output to every satellite receiver and even the basic model will suit the vast majority of home theater enthusiasts.
One quick item. It's not major, but Bell ExpressVu may need to address this issue, preferably before they get a letter from Dolby Laboratories. The designation "AC-3" is the technical designation for Dolby's multichannel sound format commonly known as "Dolby Digital". Originally, Dolby didn't have a consumer name for their new sound format until only a few years ago when it created the official name "Dolby Digital" or DD for short. With DVDs, designations such as DD 1.0, DD 2.0, DD 4.1, DD 5.0 and the big one, DD 5.1 and DD 5.1 EX, are easily understood by the majority of people who collect DVDs. This new designation needs to be integrated in Bell ExpressVu's channel guides so that they reflect today's current specifications.
About the picture and sound quality
Almost every channel is crystal clear with no static whatsoever and highly consistent colour and picture levels. The only bad channel in the line-up, RFO from St-Pierre et Miquelon, seems to be victim of some kind of radio interference from the signal source.
Many channels are at an "acceptable" level of resolution while the rest show some outstanding detail at times. Of course, these results can vary widely depending on the MPEG-2 compression level, the picture quality of the show itself, and the quality of the signal being transmitted by the originating station.
Despite the lack of a proper digital output, the sound quality between channels is mostly the same with only a couple of channels exhibiting any sound problems. Now if only the volume levels were as consistent! The differences in volume levels between channels can be startling if you're not expecting it. One channel could have a very low volume level while the next channel can have a volume level so high that you jump up from your seat! It would be nice if Bell ExpressVu could figure out how to better stabilize the volume levels coming from the service providers. But with varying volume levels between the TV shows and the commercials on the same channel, that would be very difficult.
Overall the signal received from Bell ExpressVu's satellite is much better than what I've ever seen or heard on analog cable which tends to be highly unstable no matter the service provider, the quality of the equipment or where you live. I've even heard complaints from all over North America that "digital cable" is nothing more than a digitized version of the existing analog cable's signals. Instead of analog garbage, you now have digital garbage. Canadian-based satellite services get around this problem by directly receiving the digital stream from the broadcaster, and relaying it to their subscribers with at most a conversion from one digital format to another. Not once is the signal converted to a vulnerable analog format. And the digital conversion doesn't seem to affect the picture at all.
Then again, I'm still evaluating the picture quality on my old 20" JVC TV!
Differences between Canadian and American satellite services
During my original research, I did a comparison between the different digital satellite services available in North America. I've come to the conclusion that we Canadians are a reasonably lucky bunch despite the complaints about Canadian service providers. I started by comparing the cost and channel selection between the Canadian and American service providers even though subscribing to an American service is not possible unless you play certain "subscribing games". More on this later.
One of the most inconsistent items with any service are the programming packages. ExpressVu tries to group their common-subject channels into specific theme packages, each with their own price. You also have the choice of subscribing to a group of channels for even better savings. One disadvantage of their package is that it's difficult to alter your choices to exactly what you want especially if you want both English and French channels minus the premium movie networks, or the movie network presented in the language other than the original language of your package. Still, ExpressVu shows an effort at balancing their packages the best they can.
Star Choice groups their channels so that each package costs the exact same price. The disadvantage here is that the selection of channels per package is a bit screwed up. Channels not belonging together find themselves in the same package just to balance out the price. But if you like to have as many channels as possible, then this lopsided channel selection may work out for you. For a fixed price per month, you can select your choice of a fixed number of packages.
For anyone wanting as many channels as possible, the price and channel difference between both Canadian satellite systems are very small. Call it an effect of having two competing services both after the same market. Cable companies can "own" an entire territory and never worry about competition and have developed a bad attitude towards their customers. Satellite service providers share the same territory no matter what. More on this later.
Latest update! Bell ExpressVu has revamped their package offerings to take into account the new channel line-up recently introduced. Their packages resembles the pricing structure of Star Choice where you can now choose 7, 9 or 12 packages among a collection of identically priced packages, with or without the movie package. But unlike Star Choice's package line-up, Bell ExpressVu's packages still make plenty of sense. My calculations have determined it will cost me about $50 per month for seven packages, all the network feeds from across the country in both French and English, The Movie Network and MoviePix, and all the super-stations. I've lost count on how many channels I'll be getting, but I'll be very happy with what I'll get.
The United States' DirecTV service takes a different channel packaging approach by offering all their channels in one massive package and configuring the premium channels as separate add-ons. If you want everything, this is the choice for you. Dish Network splits their channel choices as Top 50, Top 100 and so on. They also include an "everything goes" type of package with the premium channels included as add-ons. In both cases, their prices are also comparably the same, also the result of stiff competition.
Now what about the channel differences between the two countries? The first startling difference is local channels. In Canada, both satellite systems freely offer local channels from across the country with little or no restrictions. This allows the two Canadian satellite companies to offer what Bell ExpressVu like to call "Time Shifting". Basically, if you miss your show in your own time zone, you can see it in another time zone a few hours later. Or if you want to see your show earlier than scheduled, you can watch it in an earlier time zone. Bell ExpressVu even carries the American networks nationwide while Star Choice only allows you to choose the stations from a single time zone.
In the USA, the local stations were dead against losing their market share to affiliates carried on the satellite feeds. So the FCC invoked strict regulations on who exactly can receive local stations on satellite. If you can receive a local affiliate from a rooftop antenna, you can't get local stations on satellite. So chalk one up for Canadian satellite service!
Another channel difference? The American speciality channels are better than the equivalent Canadian speciality channels, but not by much. In most cases, any good show carried by the American speciality channels will eventually find it's way to the Canadian channels. In some cases, the show is broadcast on a station that would require an extra subscription package in the States. A good example of this is shows such as "Sex and the City" and "The Sopranos" which is carried by HBO, a speciality station which requires a premium subscription while in Canada the show can be found among the regular speciality services. In fact, "The Sopranos" is carried by CTV, a nationwide broadcaster.
And the final channel difference? Canadian channels, especially the French ones! As far as America is concerned, Canada is an illusion. If you do take the "underground" American subscription route, you'll have to face the fact there's no CBC, no CTV, no TVA, no TQS, no TVOntario, no CityTV... The Americans do have Bravo and Showcase, but only because they resemble American clones than legitimate Canadian stations. When it comes to true Canadian stations on American satellite service, they simply doesn't exist.
So what do the Americans get that we don't? The Disney Channel and HBO for starters. Despite that many of HBO's shows are available on Canadian channels, you have to hunt all across the dial just to find them! In exchange for lower cost access, we have to work harder at finding the blasted shows. As for Disney, there simply isn't any equivalent on Canadian television. Eventually, the CRTC will have to open up the Canadian market a bit wider if they don't want to see Canadians flock to American services despite the legal issues. After all, even the RCMP benefited from Disney's leadership at one time with their souvenir trade.
And now the big item: price! The biggest advantage of having a shitty dollar is that it keeps our prices at a reasonable level in just about everything we buy. At one time, the United States had a price advantage. These days, that is simply not the case. If you compare the price list of both Canadian and American services, you'll notice that the numbers are pretty much the same for the same type of channels. But then the almighty exchange rate comes into play, and that's when it hits you. Canadians get an average 30% reduction in price against the Americans.
One item that's greatly missing is the ability of selecting a single speciality channel. My dilemma is that I want The Game Show Network and TV5, but I don't want any of the other channels in their respective packages. It would be nice if I could pay a monthly fee for just those two channels and not pay for the other channels in the package that I don't want. Eventually, this purchase option will become a reality since there is more and more public demand for this kind of fee structure. Already some digital cable companies offer this option although the cost can run away from you. If the satellite companies want to stay competitive, they'll have to offer the same option to their customers at a reasonable price.
Most Canadian stations are discrete with their bugs, using a small translucent logo that doesn't create a "burn-in" effect on the TV screen. But American stations seem to go out of their way in using huge, highly contrasted logos that will burn into your screen after six months. Even when they use a translucent bug instead of a visible one, they normally put it so far away from the corner of the screen that it seems to be in the middle of the screen. In TV technical terms, the bug is placed in the corner of the "Safe Title" screen area instead of the preferred "Safe Action" area.
The biggest offenders? The news stations! With the introduction of information-loaded multi-screens, their static images do more damage to a TV screen than any of the bugs ever created in the history of television! More on this next.
The only news station I can bare to watch is CBC Newsworld. When it presents the news, it presents just the news and nothing else. With CTV NewsNet, CNN, CNN Headline News, CP24 and most others news stations, they use these multi-panel screens where one corner of the screen is reserved for the newscast while the rest of the screen is reserved for stock quotes, details on the current newscast, secondary news, and advertising banners. As if the commercials weren't enough.
And all this information is in a fixed position! The station bugs are bad enough, but these news screens have the potential to exercise the maximum damage to a TV screen. Leave your TV on one of these stations for an extended period of time, and you risk seeing the pattern burnt onto the picture tube permanently!
Since CBC Newsworld is part of ExpressVu's basic package, I can drop the news package altogether and spare my TV the potential damage caused by these ill conceived multi-panel channels. Even widescreen movies with their black bars don't cause this kind of damage.
About the movies (both speciality channels and pay-per-view)
Speaking of movies, the movie channels don't exactly offer a reasonable choice of movies. These channels boast of "a hundred new releases per month", but in reality you get a handful of current movies with a bunch of lesser-known filler slid in between the main presentations.
And if you don't know this by now, I prefer watching my movies in their original aspect ratio. Yet, up to now I saw only two movies listed as being presented in widescreen format: "Cast Away" and "Traffic". Even worse, it seems Bell ExpressVu gives you a choice between widescreen and Dolby Digital, but not both at the same time. If you have a fully equipped home theater and a satellite receiver with a digital audio output, you're out of luck. You can't have the best of both worlds.
Unless the new speciality channels such as Showcase Action and IFC coming out this fall don't attempt to remedy this situation, I won't be subscribing to these channels any time soon. I'd rather stick with my DVDs.
About the radio and Galaxie stations
If it wasn't for Galaxie, CBC's 24 hour music service, Montreal would be stuck with only one acceptable FM channel, a channel that broadcasts only classical music. In fact, station CJPX was started with minimal staff and very little hope for success. After all, who would listen to a classical music station when the CBC offers a similar service? Enough to make the station number one in the Montreal area in the first month of broadcast. Afterwards, it fell a few positions on the charts, but has always stayed near the top. Bell ExpressVu felt the station was good enough to be carried nationwide on one of their audio channels. Many major radio stations across the country are also available on Bell ExpressVu's system.
And what about Galaxie's offerings? They're all categorized by themes such as pop rock, hard rock, alternate, baroque, classical and jazz. Two stations of Jazz and one of Blues to be exact. And the person responsible for the programming on the two Jazz stations is none other than Ross Porter, the host of CBC Radio's "After Hours", one of Canada's best Jazz connoisseurs, and the person who pointed me to the best Jazz CDs out there. Needless to say the two stations sound fantastic.
Since Galaxie and many other stations are already part of Bell ExpressVu's basic package, you're not really paying extra cash for some decent music.
Cable companies have been receiving quite a beating from both clients and critics for years. And for good reason.
With the help of the CRTC, a single cable company can "own" an entire territory. As a consequence, the cable companies were offering a service that often didn't meet their customers' expectations of a better picture and a better choice of channels. Why would they bother? There's no competition!
Today's situation hasn't improved much. Even with digital cable, the choices from Montreal's local cable company Vidéotron can't even compete with what Bell ExpressVu has to offer. With ExpressVu, not only do we get just about every channel legally available in Canada (triple-digit channel numbers!), we also get network affiliates from all the other time zones. Some cable companies offer a few "time shifting" channels of their own in their line-up, but it's the satellite service providers that give you just about everything you can get from across the country and then some, ensuring the least opportunity to miss the show you wanted to watch all week long. For the cable companies, advertising the arrival of "digital cable" will not work if you can't deliver a service comparable to the satellite service providers.
And speaking of digital cable, have you seen the cost of this monstrosity? The terminal from Vidéotron costs sixteen bucks a month! Then you have to shell out money for basic service and the speciality channels. By the time you add it all up, you're short-changed quite a few channels when you compare the monthly cost with satellite service.
Rogers Cable has been airing some commercials blasting away at the satellite service providers in all the traditional ways such as the extra costs of adding a second TV to the service, weather problems and so on. But when you find out the same type of problems exist with cable service providers (wait until you find out how much that spare cable outlet REALLY costs), then what difference does it make?
Maybe it's time the cable companies actually tried to improve their own service instead of trying to discredit the satellite competition. Hint! Hint!
I read messages from various newsgroups of the efforts attempted by many people to "beat the system" and obtain satellite service (often American) without paying for a subscription. The question I ask is "why bother?"
The Web page http://www.legal-rights.org/publicdomain.html contains a Quebec Superior Court ruling which proclaims that since there's no official Canadian licensee of the American satellite feeds, the American satellite signals are considered "public domain". In other words, it's "not illegal" to receive and decode American satellite signals since no company has claimed ownership of those signals here in Canada, unlike Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice who are the legal owners of their respective signals and are protected by the law.
But circumventing the normal process of receiving and decoding American DBS signals requires expensive and complex hacking equipment sold by "underground" distributors without any guarantee the equipment will all work properly. This equipment could be as simple as a hacked smart card which is disabled or "zapped" as soon as the American service provider uncovers the number of the hacked card, or it could involve external equipment that connects through the smart card port and allows a person to reprogram the "virtual" card as soon as an old registration number is zapped by the service provider.
Others will go the "grey" route by first obtaining the American equipment, then subscribe to the service using an American mailing address. However, as mentioned previously, the cost of the American service is higher than the cost of similar services in Canada. Plus, the Canadian service providers get all the local channels across the country including the ones from the United States which many Americans can't receive themselves. And as mentioned, any show worth watching will be rebroadcast on a Canadian affiliate in no time at all. You don't need to get HBO in order to watch "Sex and the City" since a couple of Canadian channels will eventually carry the show if it's worth watching. Plus, receiving American satellite service even with a subscription could still be declared illegal once the loopholes are plugged up.
Considering the efficiency of Canada's legal system, it's always possible this legal matter will be resolved only years from now. In the meantime, hacking American signals will still be recognized as "not illegal". Still, obtaining pirated satellite service is like trying to be "comped" in a Las Vegas casino. You have to spend so much money to get the "free" stuff that you can't afford it.
The cable companies through the monopolistic business practices and shoddy service have successfully alienated not only their existing client base, but also many potential clients including myself who have rejected becoming a subscriber to cable for so many years. I objected to all the charges that came with the Vidéotron service including the exorbitant installation charges which often involved having a technician screw in a cable connector inside a locked box. If I'm going to pay for installation, I want something that's worth it! I want promotions that make it worth my while to take a chance, and programming packages that come close to the type of shows I want to watch. Finally, I don't want to be locked into a long term contract since I don't know when I'll change my mind in the future.
Services such as Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice have gone out of their way to give their new customers many incentives to sign up including at the very least enough programming credits to compensate part of the cost of the equipment purchases. Plus, the picture and sound quality are so much better than what cable has to offer even on a good day. Sure there are still a few bugs such as the lack of specific channel subscriptions and rain fade, but these problems pale in comparison to the constant complaints I hear from cable subscribers.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to start planning which channels among the now over 170 regular video channels I'll want to keep following the promotional period. Decisions, decisions...