Rogers clear-QAM channels

[gizmo3141]

Was looking at Cogeco's web site and it had a package called 'Digital Acess' for 5.99/month. I'm thinking of moving to Bracebridge, Ontario, and I was wondering if the digital channels were still available over clear QAM. Anybody done a scan recently? Can you post a list of the unencrypted channels?

,Apparently, all analog transmission outside of Canada's 8 major markets and the Capitol area (Ottawa) will cease in June of 2011. The CRTC in it's infantile wisdom has decided that the basic cable package will be free outside of the 9 major markets where ATSC is broadcast over the air. This includes satellite television as well, but you have to buy the appropriate equipment to obtain the service....I'm using ATSC in Toronto right now and it's mostly great wonderful quality, much better than what I've seen on Roger's service.

I have 2 rogers SD boxes connected over svideo, and it's so heavily compressed as to make it almost un-viewable on my plasma. The ATSC is for lack of a better word perfect.

Rogers will remain encrypted and heavily compressed until they bite the bullet and get rid of their MPEG2 Scientific Atlanta boxes. They need to upgrade to some form of MPEG4 in order to increase quality, and still preserve their bandwidth. When I compress a 1080i ATSC transmission down to MPEG4 using SageTV it's something lik 3X smaller.

We should all start posting our Canadian unencrypted QAM channels from different cities and towns and cable companies around the country, complete with resolutions and bit rates. Now that would be useful information!

[wayner]

I don't think it is fair to say that Rogers overcompresses SD. On a large TV SD looks like crap usually because it is 480i. Comparing SD via Svideo to ATSC is apples to oranges.

ATSC quality is likely a little better quality than Rogers HD but I personally don't notice a difference between hockey games recorded in Sage on ATSC vs. Rogers HD connected to one of my HD-PVRs when watching on my largest TV - a 60" Sony.

Digital Home Canada has lots of discussions about QAM in Canada. I haven't followed the threads recently but I don't think many, if any, Canadian cable shows have a significant amount of unencrypted channels. When I did a QAM scan of my Rogers cable feed a couple of months ago on my HDHR all I gotwas music channels I believe.

Edit - here is a thread on DHC. Note that unencrypted channels varies a lot from city to city but it looks like some areas do (or did) have many unencrypted channels. http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=55234

[gizmo3141]

ATSC quality is likely a little better quality than Rogers HD but I personally don't notice a difference between hockey games recorded in Sage on ATSC vs. Rogers HD connected to one of my HD-PVRs when watching on my largest TV - a 60" Sony.

I'm sitting 18" away from a 24" computer monitior right now, Meet the Press is on NBC right now...on the antenna, and trust me it's flippin' beautiful! Do you know what I mean by ATSC?

ATSC HD = 1080i 1920x1080@30fps 17,500mbps
Rogers SD =480i 320x240@30fps 2500mbps (approx. bit rate) --oops 640X480

Compared to the over the air signal, Rogers' signal looks like someone sketched it out with a crayon. Badly.

Compared to an analog over the air signal which is apples to apples...(with almost perfect reception), at the exact same resolution, the signal still looks better because it's uncompressed. Trust me, if you know what to look for, the digital compression artifacts in the Rogers signal are really distracting. Turn on CP24 and look closely at the fonts. If your TV wasn't valiantly trying to smooth them out for you, you would have difficulty even reading them.

Or compare a movie on DVD to the same movie played on one of Roger's movie channels...HUGE difference. And again this is apples to apples as they are both digital sources, the only difference being resolution and bit rate.

[wayner]

I know what you mean by ATSC - my Sage server has three ATSC tuners and I get all of the Buffalo stations OTA.

But you are comparing Rogers SD to ATSC HD. To do a valid comparison get an HD box and compare Rogers HD to ATSC. If you were watching Meet the Press on WGRZ-DT via Rogers it would also look flippin beautiful. And isn't 480i content 640x480 rather than 320x240?

And ATSC is not uncompressed, it is very compressed as uncompressed HD is several Gigabits per second. Rogers, and the satellite companies, do somewhat recompress the signals how much and whether it is noticable is a different issue.

And note that some of the ATSC channels do not use the full bandwidth available as they use some for subchannels. For example WGRZ-DT from Buffalo. They have two subchannels, NBC Universal sports and a retro TV channel. That takes away from the full allotment of about 19 Mbps for an ATSC channel.

[gizmo3141]

I've done a subjective comparison, but since Rogers doesn't allow you to tune directly to any of their HD channels using a QAM tuner, and doesn't appear to publish the resolution or bitrate anywhere...that's all I can do. I know they say it's 1080i in some of their advertising, and likely it is...but subjectively at least it seems to be a much lower bit rate.

Has anyone seen these numbers published? I'd love to see them!

I'll have to install SageTV server on my laptop and take it up north next time I go, see what I get. Just saying that Rogers could achieve much better quality at the same bit rate by using some form of MPEG4, rather than the Scientific Atlanta boxes they have.

It's just irritating when someone screws their 50" 1080p plasma into the analog cable outlet in the wall and declares that it's HD. I know people who have done just that.

But you are comparing Rogers SD to ATSC HD. To do a valid comparison get an HD box and compare Rogers HD to ATSC. If you were watching Meet the Press on WGRZ-DT via Rogers it would also look flippin beautiful. And isn't 480i content 640x480 rather than 320x240?

Yes it is, whoops!

[gizmo3141]

And ATSC is not uncompressed, it is very compressed as uncompressed HD is several Gigabits per second. Rogers, and the satellite companies, do somewhat recompress the signals how much and whether it is noticable is a different issue.

I find it noticable, that's why I'm curious about the bit rate.

Never said ATSC wasn't compressed MPEG2 is of course a type of compression. It just seems subjectively that it is less compressed than the signal I see on Rogers HD. And it is. I was talking about the NTSC signal when I said UNCOMPRESSED, or should have been at least.

And note that some of the ATSC channels do not use the full bandwidth available as they use some for subchannels. For example WGRZ-DT from Buffalo. They have two subchannels, NBC Universal sports and a retro TV channel. That takes away from the full allotment of about 19 Mbps for an ATSC channel.

Actually, yes that's interesting...17-1 PBS does the same thing, as a result the bit rate on PBS and NBC is approx. 12mbps if I remember correctly. And it is noticable in blocking appearing on some faster moving images, and a slightly fuzzier picture in general. The two sub channels are only about 2.5 mbps and are definitely blocky most of the time depending on the source of the content... Some of the stuff on Universal Sports seems like it's been taken off of the worst satellite feed ever.

A good example of how to do the side band thing is ION. VLC reports the bitrate at 38 mbps, but I'm not sure of this number...The two sub channels appear to be 15mbps...but that number seems awfully high to me...480i of course....Most cartoons on Qubo look excellent, but then it also depends on the source of the content...Those numbers must be wrong, if there's only 19mbps available. Maybe the frame rate of 60 is the reason why...

[wayner]

Most of the Rogers HD boxes actually report the format that they are outputting on the front of the box - i.e. 1080i, 480p, 720p so it is not like Rogers is hiding that. I think you are correct that Rogers does not publish the bitrate that they use bit this may differ across their network. There have been threads on Digital Home Canada in the past comparing the bitrates on different channels - you can tell the bitrate by seeing how much space a recording takes on the hard drive of the Rogers PVRs such as the SA8300HD. The full ATSC bitrate of 19 Mbps is equivalent to about 8.5 GigaBytes per hour. Note that in some instances Rogers (or more likely the Canadian network simsubbing) may also insert their own logo into the stream as well which means that they could be downgrading the quality.

I believe the format is actually determined by the broadcaster and although my box shows 1080i for all of the US networks I could swear that one or two of them broadcast in 720p - Fox for example.

In terms of switching to MPEG-4, while that would free up bandwidth I doubt that this will happen any day soon. What does Rogers do for all of the people that have purchased the SA boxes that aren't capable of MPEG-4? That includes me since I own 7 Rogers HD boxes and I may buy even more if they have them for sale at $99 on Boxing Day like they did a couple of years ago. Rogers could free up bandwidth in other ways, like getting rid of analog cable, which I bet will happen before they go to MPEG-4, and getting rid of SD channels that have HD counterparts. Getting rid of analog cable has other benefits for Rogers as well - like making it much harder to steal cable from a neighbour, and making every cable subscriber a potential PPV or ROD customer. Of course the downside is they lose a differentiating factor vs satellite - you don't require a box at every TV.

[j3rt]

Originally Posted by chughes

Of course it can be done. I just don't need to for my admittedly low-tech HTPC needs.

Ditto

[wayner]

Originally Posted by j3rt

Ditto

Kind of slow on the response - 21 months!