Telus → Anyone else notice Bell has Mediaroom now?

It am starting to see the whole picture now. Bell and Shaw use encoders made by Harmonic (and both are listed as reference customers on the Harmonic web page), while Telus use Tandberg, and that is the main reason for the video quality difference.

Also, Telus are using Bell Satellite feeds for some of their channels, which further exacerbates the problem.

It also seems to me that Telus have opted to sacrifice some potential video quality improvements in order to achieve faster channel switching.

And, of course, the inexcusable balck levels bug which practically destroys the video quality, even if none of the previous issues existed.

I guess that's it.

What's the difference between the Harmonic and Tandberg encoders? How did you find out what each company used?

Both Tandberg's and Harmonic's products are broadcast encoders; tuned for real-time and low latency. When the Tandberg HD8090's were picked, they were the best AVC encoder's available.

As already mentioned, Bell Fibe TV uses the same Mediaroom architecture as us, and would have the same issue with delayed feeds. Also, as previously mentioned the black level bug is a combination of problems, part of which is the encoder, and the other part being the decoder in the STB. The STB behavior was incorrect in Mediaroom 1.6, but is now correct in Mediaroom 2.x, and hence shows the black level bug. Regardless, this problem will be fixed early next year.

Hi when will Telus launch the Cisco ISB7005 for mediaroom with the Broadcom BCM4717V? Neat tech.

I hate to bring up this discussion as I am curious to see how the picture quality will look like when the new firmware is released. But recently, I took a trip to the US and had a chance to see picture quality from different providers. All I can say is WOW... Verizon Fios and I believe Time Warner both had amazing HD quality. I would say it was as good as Netflix (which many posters were talking about how Netflix can't be compared because of Constant bitrate vs Variable bitrate).

Why does it seem like we are so far behind in technology in Canada?? But like I said, I guess we'll have to see what happens when the new firmware comes out.

Also, has anyone compared the new Shaw Gateway vs Optik picture? I'm really curious how these two stack up. Shaw claims that the gateway is better than their previous HD services.

I wouldn't want to be seen as coming in defense of Telus's poor video quality, but the comparison is not really fair. Verizon FIOS is regarded as the best TV delivery service because it is entirely over optical cables. It is only available in limited number of areas in the US, and it looks like Verizon is not expanding it anymore.
Time Warner, if I'm not mistaken, is cable. You don't have to go to the states to see excellent HD quality over cable, you can see the same on Shaw here.
The only "apple to apple" comparison you can make is between Telus Optik and AT&T U-verse. They use the same technology. I bet the comparison would be in favour of AT&T as well, because, as already discussed in this thread, Telus' issues have nothing to do with the limitations of the technology, but are entirely due to their particularly bad implementation. My personal guess is that the high ranking executive responsible for Optik TV is a guy with decades of experience in finance and telephony and with less than amateur knowledge about TV.
Also, Netflix's advantage is not exactly the variable bitrate, but because their streams have been encoded in multiple passes before streaming, not in real time. Still Netflix's quality, although outstanding for the bitrate and in all respects better than Optik TV, is not the best. Free OTA HD can deliver better quality than any other service I've seen, bested only by Blu-ray.

Any ETA on the black level bug ?

Not yet but the new firmware is being testing by internal employee at their premise. This is the last phase before it gets promoted to production.

Thanks symtex. Are there any other updates in this patch ?

PVR lost of sync between master and slaves box : fixed

I am uncertain about the black level. I only know a few people who has the new firmware install.