Bell Canada → [RANT] Bell TV ads = stupidity !

So, there was the fake game show commercials for Bell Fibe where 2 persons were representing the "Cable" company.

Reality check, who on earth would represent a competitor in a biased set with huge characters "Bell" in the background and all questions are about that company? Plain stupid, so are your clients.

The new commercial, ok, MPEG-4 compression can fit more HD content on a similar-size hard disk than MPEG-2, but reality check, if any company want to go to marketing war and fit more HD content on their devices, they'll have to compress the hell out of their HD channels, rending "HIGH DEFINITION" so obsolete you'll get a better picture with an antenna.

At the end of the commercial, a bystander tells the Fibe installer "Hook me up!", and he replies "No problem". Shouldn't he reply instead "Call Emily" ?

The beavers commercials were silly, but at least didn't take their clients for stupid idiots.

As for Rogers ads, they hied the same two guys in a bunch of cellphone commercials : the clean-cut guy and the idiot. First ad was ok, the second ad you tell yourself they should recognize each other by now, and the recent one, where the idiot is surrounded by a bunch of ladies showing photos on his cellphone, daydreaming in front of an ad in the metro : NOBODY in real life does that !

I don't really like their ads either. If they had spent that money that they do on advertising installing a 7330 remote in my area that money would be better spent as we are still on adsl2+ copper to co in this area.

rending "HIGH DEFINITION" so obsolete you'll get a better picture with an antenna.

but reality check, if any company want to go to marketing war and fit more HD content on their devices, they'll have to compress the hell out of their HD channels, rending "HIGH DEFINITION" so obsolete you'll get a better picture with an antenna.

While that would apply to a cable or satellite provider, the compression versus content issue would specifically not apply to Fibe TV or any IPTV provider for that matter, at least not on a level where it would matter.

An MPEG2 like what the cable companies use needs to be in the 20+ Mbit/s range to display the same quality as Fibe TV's 7.

As far as the actual content, cable and satellite are limited to the amount of bandwidth that they can provide on a single QAM or transponder. This is not unlimited. In order for them to provide more channels they need to compress them further, reducing picture quality. With Fibe TV a point-to-point connection runs between your box and the CO.

Fibe TV uses AVC and is 7Mbit/s for an HD signal. It always is.

You're talking the same as 20Mbit/s off-air 720p MPEG2 from Fox or ABC, and probably even better due to no macroblocking and a few other things specific to the MPEG4 family of CODECs. It is only 720p, but that is a while other debate onto itself.

They don't "compress" the signal more. That's the way it is. Bell will not provision service unless they can dedicate 25Mbit/s to television bandwidth in some form or another.

Because each subscriber is only receiving the channel that they're tuned to, and the connection between the modem and the CO where the video server is located has dedicated for your television channel you're tuned to, Bell could theoretically offer an unlimited number of HD channels over their IPTV service and the only limitation they'll run into is fibre capacity to the video server at the CO. IPTV doesn't run into the same limitation as QAMs being shared on a node like SDV on cable does.

It is also my understanding that a bunch of Bell's satellite HD channels are now also H.264 as well, but only at around 4Mbit/s.

The other Rogers cellphone commercial : "It's like comparing this... to this. This one's ok, that one's faster".

I mean, really?
1) There are two person at the marina leaving their seadoo unattended with the contact on and motor running. Nobody does THAT (except on a private camp, but again, gas ain't cheap).
2) Since when do you judge a motor vehicle runs faster on water by just looking at its outer shell ?

Stupid.

Bhell have FTTH and FTTN customers. For argument's sake, customers can't always get full sync on FTTN, but will still want to PVR 3 HD shows at the same time while keeping a minimum for the internet.
Sooooo, eventho you're a FTTH customer with a 1 Gbps capacity sync, you still get a compressed signal coming throught, while at the same time, you could instead get a 1080p TSN feed at 20 Mbps in Bell's MPEG-4 codec family for an enhanced experience. But that will lower the HDD capacity from 100 hours to... who cares, facing false advertising allegations.

2) Both Fox and ABC from Vermont have SD sub-channels, meaning they're using around 14 Mbps of video bitrate. But are you trying to tell me that Bell grabs an already compressed signal, change the codec and the signal is suddenly better? C'mon!
3) Bell operates stations, they have direct access to the uncompressed result (think 50-70 Mbps) where they can compress the channels themselves and provide the better outcome.

Bhell have FTTH and FTTN customers. For argument's sake, customers can't always get full sync on FTTN, but will still want to PVR 3 HD shows at the same time while keeping a minimum for the internet.

Sooooo, eventho you're a FTTH customer with a 1 Gbps capacity sync, you still get a compressed signal coming throught, while at the same time, you could instead get a 1080p TSN feed at 20 Mbps in Bell's MPEG-4 codec family for an enhanced experience. But that will lower the HDD capacity from 100 hours to... who cares, facing false advertising allegations.

Yikes!
1) ATSC is 19.4 Mbps max off-air, not 20.

2) Both Fox and ABC from Vermont have SD sub-channels, meaning they're using around 14 Mbps of video bitrate. But are you trying to tell me that Bell grabs an already compressed signal, change the codec and the signal is suddenly better? C'mon!

They're already re-encoding every single channel they bring in. For a lot if not most of the content it is being compressed more. I'm not saying that necessarily means a worse picture quality. It really depends on how they tune the video encoder settings.

The feeds don't come from the CO. They're fed from Bell TV's (formerly Bell ExpressVu) facility at 115 Scarsdale Rd. Which is where they ingest all of the channels either via sat or dedicated circuits mostly Ethernet links, re-encode and then send it out via sat or IPTV.

Bell has been using H.264 for quite awhile now and they did so with a bunch of specialty SD channels to start off with.