The Pessimist

I finally succumbed to a Rogers pitch for digital cable TV. They've been pitching it for a couple of years in various forms: better bundles, personal TV, etc. But the pitch that finally worked appealed to the accountant in me: for just 50 cents a month you get all this stuff.

So I now have a digital cable box, a super fancy universal remote and channels numbered from 000 to 999. I have foreign language channels, music channels, movie channels, on-demand channels, time-shift channels, and who knows what else. Woo hoo!

After the first week, I was ready to send it back. The digital signal was unreliable (jumpy and pixelated, like a bad satellite link); the remote control wouldn't talk to the TV (which is an RCA, the "default" TV); and just watching and programming the VCR was an exercise in rocket-science.

The first problem was solved with a service call. At the store they tell you "just attach it to the existing cable outlet". But the existing cable outlet was a series of splitter boxes and 4 lengths of cable, none of which were compatible with the newer cable specifications. To their credit, the installer upgraded all of the cable, no charge.

The second problem has not been/cannot be solved. Even though the instruction manual clearly indicates that the channel selector on the remote can be "unlocked", neither the telephone tech help nor the installer could get it to do so. [More on that in the next post.]

As for the VCR, after trying several of the possible configuration arrangements, I got one that worked more or less to my satisfaction. But setting up to record a show requires two remotes and an incantation of at least 20 key-presses.

But have all of these channels increased my viewing pleasure? Not really. I still watch mostly from the 60 channels I had before. Thank god Rogers had the good sense to not renumber the channels. The main difference is that watching TV is now less convenient.

There are 1000 channel numbers. I don't know how many are actually used; more than 500 I guess. But I don't have all of the channels; the VIP bundle includes lots of channels, but there are still a lot more. The kicker is that the only way to tell I don't get a channel is to tune to it and be told "you don't subscribe to this channel. To subscribe to the channel phone 888-blah blah blah". But all of the channels appear on the guide.

All 3 of my TVs, even my oldest, a 25 year old RCA, have a feature for deselecting channels you don't want. In the basic cable world with 60 channels, I'd usually deselect 25 channels I never watch: the french language channels, the sports channels (speed, golf, etc), the Nashville network, CSPAN, etc. But in Rogers digital cable land, you cannot even deselect the channels you don't get, let alone those you don't watch.

Rogers provides a feature on the guide to search for programs by title. It lists every show for the entire day in alphabetical order. You can enter the list at any first letter. It is theoretically useful for finding time-shift shows. [I recently tried to find NBC Dateline, which I missed at 7:00. The guide said it was showing again at 10:00. Alas, I don't have that channel included in my bundle.] However, this feature is nearly useless. Pick any letter, say 'D'. You'd think 'Dateline' would be early on the list. You'd be right, except that you can only see 5 shows at a time on the guide, and Dateline was over 30 screens into the list. God help you if you want to find 'Donahue'. [It is even worse than that ... the list is case sensitive. Shows listed in upper case come before shows listed in mixed case.]

Rogers may think they have addressed this problem with two other features: Personal TV and favourites. Each is a user selectable list of 5 channels. This feature is sort of useful, but not really. 5 is too few; 500 is too many.

So, this is an open appeal to Rogers: Please change your system. At least add an option to the guide to suppress channels I don't subscribe to. And if you can devise some easy way to let me drop channels I don't watch, even better. But the latter may be challenging. Dropping 15 channels in a 60 channel universe is pretty easy; dropping 250 in a 500 channel universe, not so much.