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Telus Optic VS Shaw


WillyFox

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for me personally i would take shaw anyday but since my landlord provides the cable i have telus optik

it worked wonderfully for the first 3 months, but now the past week i can no longer pause and rewind live tv, my digital box freezes when i try to do any commands regarding recording (set new recording, delete recorded show etc)

it always says pvr system busy. please try again

now whenever that happens, when i restart the box i cant even change the channels, have to do the whole unplug hard reset thing

just wondering if any other fellow cdcers had the same problem???

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Well I got Optik hooked up on the weekend and here's my $0.02:

I'll start with the good...

The tech was on time, courteous, friendly and knowledgeable. The installation was largely trouble free (though that was helped by my having some already existing data/Cat6 lines instead of using the houses 30+ year old coax wiring) and quick. This was a relief as I'd heard some horror stories with installations and service crapping out after tech leave etc. He even gave me a couple free 5 port switches to replace my existing single switch (I needed some extra ports for the TV's).

The internet is great. I previously had the 40Mbps service through Delta Cable and "downgraded" to Telus' 25Mbs service. There seems to be no real world downgrade in speed however (Delta's speeds would vary greatly throughout the day). Telus actually has a much faster ping (between 5-8ms so far) and a tick better upload speeds (low 3's vs high 2's for Delta) as well. I was measuring low 24Mbps consistently on Speedtest and it only dropped to high 22's/low 23's with the TV on which I was happy about. I don't feel like I've lost much, if anything here in real world terms. If anything I'll be happy to enjoy the bump in upload speed for posting pictures on Facebook etc and the low ping speed seems to make the web much more responsive.

The GUI, guide, features (30 second skip I LOVE you!) are a VAST improvement over Delta Cable and I can't wait to utilize the remote recording feature. The TV system is just simpler, more "fun" and more intuitive to use. My wife even made some "this is girl-friendly!" comments last night while using it the first time.

All this and it's about $15/month cheaper (plus I get the aforementioned free tablet) than Delta Cable's service.

Now for the bad... and so far I've only noted one negative. The picture quality (HD channels) is slightly lower. This likely is due at least partially to Telus re-sampling all HD to 720p for their system. Delta Cable simply passed through the native broadcast resolution (1080i for most channels, 720p for TSN for example). 720p handles motion better than 1080i (great for sports, action movies etc) but 1080i has better resolution for more stationary pictures (most sitcoms, dramas, documentaries etc). Some may also be due to the level of compression they use but I have no data to support/deny that. The long and short of it is that the picture is slightly "softer". It's certainly not un-watchable but it isn't quite as pretty.

If any of you Telus Optik guys no a way to tweak the system to increase the TV bandwidth, I'd gladly sacrifice another 0.5-1Mbps of internet speed for a boost in PQ if that is part of the problem.

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People have to understand that the biggest problem is not between the two, but that the internet in BC sucks in general. I'm not sure if it's because our cables are old or what, but in countless games I have noticed that people from BC will almost always have the worst ping compared to anywhere else in the US.

It's good that Telus is switching to fibreoptic but that's going to take forever. And the worst part is, from what I've seen 'high speed' internet like that in BC is astronomically high for no real reason. We're kind of stuck with inferior internet at crazy high prices.

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People have to understand that the biggest problem is not between the two, but that the internet in BC sucks in general. I'm not sure if it's because our cables are old or what, but in countless games I have noticed that people from BC will almost always have the worst ping compared to anywhere else in the US.

It's good that Telus is switching to fibreoptic but that's going to take forever. And the worst part is, from what I've seen 'high speed' internet like that in BC is astronomically high for no real reason. We're kind of stuck with inferior internet at crazy high prices.

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People have to understand that the biggest problem is not between the two, but that the internet in BC sucks in general. I'm not sure if it's because our cables are old or what, but in countless games I have noticed that people from BC will almost always have the worst ping compared to anywhere else in the US.

It's good that Telus is switching to fibreoptic but that's going to take forever. And the worst part is, from what I've seen 'high speed' internet like that in BC is astronomically high for no real reason. We're kind of stuck with inferior internet at crazy high prices.

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  • 3 months later...

if I want to switch from shaw to telus, any suggestions for negotiating the best deal I can? Is there a specific dept to talk to that can offer better deals? I can live with a contract if they offer a TV, but also want the 6 months promotional pricing.

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  • 3 months later...

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