CRTC Enforced $25/mo Cable TV Is Now Available To Canadians, But With Caveats 194
Deathspawner writes: Last March, Canada's regulatory agency for all things broadcasting, CRTC, ruled that cable TV providers would soon be forced to offer $25/mo packages. With enforcement having kicked-off on March 1, these inexpensive packages have now been made available. As Techgage has discovered, though, the first packages out-of-the-gate pack a number of caveats, and in some cases, are outright misleading. And, despite a simple framework to worth with, the two largest providers in the country, Rogers and Bell, offer vastly different packages, and ultimately vastly different values to the consumer.
wrong solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:wrong solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Canada operates as semi-protectionist. Meaning you're never going to see enough competition here, especially for the landmass and number of people(more people live in California then Canada last I looked). That means the government is left with the option of imposing things when stuff gets out of whack, which it is in Canada right now. Most people I know who had cable up until a few years ago was paying $90/mo for 55 channels. Many dropped cable for netflix and so on. Hell even my parents are considering it, because the only stuff that they see is: Reality TV, reality TV, reality TV, reality TV and more reality TV. Most of what is watched in their house is AMC. What most of my friends watch was sports(which they can pay for online).
Re:wrong solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of the issue has nothing to do with the number of people living in Canada, as most people in Canada live in a very small strip of land near the US border.
The issue has to do with the fact that many cities in Canada sold their souls to the cable company and nobody else is allowed to compete. The correct method would have been for the city to install the cables and then lease access to anyone who is interested in using them, with preferably multiple interconnects offered in each distribution panel.
Throw in also that the CRTC makes it illegal to have any satellite service competition (It is a crime in Canada to view any unauthorized signals, this even includes Canadian signals if they have not received CRTC authorization!) and you have a perfect storm for what is happening now.
The cable issue is presently unfixable. If the CRTC would delete the rules regarding satellite competition, DirecTV/Dishnetwork would destroy Bell/Shaw in seconds.
Yes, it's bad enough DirecTV is a saviour compared to Bell. It's like wishing Mussolini would move run your country because the current leader is just *that* bad.
If you keep trusting the CRTC to force the competition on Bell and Rogers, I have a bridge to sell you... One that, like the CRTC, is indirectly operated by Bell and Rogers.
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That means the government is left with the option of imposing things when stuff gets out of whack, which it is in Canada right now. Most people I know who had cable up until a few years ago was paying $90/mo for 55 channels. Many dropped cable for netflix and so on.
I'm sorry, I don't see what the problem here is. Why does the pricing need to be regulated? Obviously, some smarter (ex-)customers have figured out the obvious solution to overpriced cable TV, as you noted here yourself. This doesn't need any
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I'm sorry, I don't see what the problem here is. Why does the pricing need to be regulated?
Because Canadians told them to and , according to one poll last year, 64% of Canadians explicitly support the pick'n'pay policy and 25% are undecided, and that only leaves 11% against it.
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I'd prefer to see a free-market solution to this. That's what we're doing here in the US, to a good extent, and it's working: cable companies keep jacking up their prices for TV service, so smart people "cut the cord" in response while TV-addicted morons get stuck paying the higher prices. Eventually, this should result in the cablecos going out of business, or turning into internet-only utilities (which absolutely should be regulated as I said before).
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The size of the country and the population density shouldn't stop the market from determining a fair price, though.
If Rogers, Bell, Telus or Shaw weren't under the eye of the CRTC like they are now. And after they tried to piss around with GAS(aggregated service for internet), it would cost $150/mo for 60GB and they'd still be charging you $20 to rent a modem to boot. The CRTC kicked them in the balls when they tried that BS before.
The problem in Canada, is while indeed 70% of our population lives within 100km of the US border there's still a whole pile of empty space. Lots of talk over the last 15 years though of bu
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The vast majority of the empty space doesn't have access to internet or cellular however. As a Canadian I've never heard it suggested we would build or nationalize internet, I'm not sure where you're hearing that. The city of Ottawa used to own a fiber network supplying hospitals and government buildings with internet access, unfortunately that was sold to Rogers.
The real solution here is to breakup Telus, Bell & Rogers - disallow companies from owning infrastructure and dealing directly with consumers
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We are part of the way there in that they are forced to open up their infrastructure for the last mile (kilometer?) to competitors. I haven't been with Bell or Rogers for Internet access in over 15 years.
Cell phone service is a different matter. Seems like anytime a competitor comes along it stays around for a few years and then gets bought up by one of the big three. It then gets kept around to show that there's some competition even if there isn't. The problem is that there is only two national cell netw
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It's technically termed "the last mile" even in CRTC documents. Those TPIA's(Third Party Internet Access) are also trying to get the CRTC to allow it to happen with fiber as well. But Bell, Rogers, Telus are all trying to say "nononononono we want it to be ours and ours alone." Right at the time time that they tried pushing in TPIA rates that would price the competition right out of business. If I remember right, Teksavvy for example pays around $22/mo to bell and rogers, not sure on cogeco or telus. B
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Yes, I know the term is last mile but I put kilometre in as a joke since I'm in Canada and it should be metric.
I've been with TekSavvy for a couple of years now and they have been pretty good. The CRTC says that the independent ISPs pay a rate that allows Bell or Rogers to recover their costs plus make a specified percentage of profit (at least that's how it was). I do wish that the physical network was split from the service side of the companies. It would make an independent company to provide what's requ
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Gee I wonder how I got this wrong?
http://www.itworldcanada.com/a... [itworldcanada.com]
https://www.thestar.com/busine... [thestar.com]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com... [theglobeandmail.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (and the section below about LTE)
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It get even better when you have a sane modern infrastructure like a single strand a fiber to each home from the CO. Layer a muni based L3 network on top on one pair of wavelengths you still easily have room for 7 more per home and smaller players can choose to use the muni's L3 network till it makes sense to build out their own for the town. The muni gains a network for emergency services, school librarys etc, businesses in town can layer on top for their own infrastructure needs at l2 or at l3. If the
Re:wrong solution (Score:4, Informative)
Both you and TFA are both missing the point of what's going on here. It just doesn't matter if the basic package sucks because the cable providers must now offer "a la carte" pricing for the rest of the channels instead of forcing you into bundles. The upshot of this is that basic cable is now $25 and if you only watch 5 or 6 stations, you buy them one at a time without having to get a package that includes 20 channels you can't be bothered to watch.
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The thing you're missing is that to get those "a la carte" channels, a lot of those companies are pulling a "and you need to have xyz" service from us too! Internet is the popular one. So, that $25 is now $90 and those 3 or 5 channels you want? Well you might not be able to get them separately, so you might have to buy them in bundle packs. Which could cost you $9-25 per bundle, you're looking at $150+ now...
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Come December, they will be forced to offer each channel as it's own option instead of in bundles. This is only stage 1 of that plan.
Mind you, I can't be bothered.,. It's been a good 13 years since I've paid for any service that offers me TV in "channel" form..
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The thing you're missing is that to get those "a la carte" channels, a lot of those companies are pulling a "and you need to have xyz" service from us too! Internet is the popular one. So, that $25 is now $90 and those 3 or 5 channels you want? Well you might not be able to get them separately, so you might have to buy them in bundle packs. Which could cost you $9-25 per bundle, you're looking at $150+ now...
So... you're saying prices are going to go down? Because seriously, $150 sounds like less than what you have paid to get some individual channels last year, and you wouldn't have been getting internet service included in that price...
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The government ... should ensure there's enough competition
Not sure how they can do that. It's going to happen anyway in some arenas but not in ones that require large infrastructure.
and that the competition is fair
All I can say is, it's funny how politicians in government seem to have investments in companies that get "fortunate" breaks.
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You can't really have much competition in the cable and landline phone markets. That's because the entrenched players have been granted access to run their wires on poles and underground; it's not feasible to open up that market and it's way too expensive for new entrants.
Bell and Rogers are regulated (as they should be) because they are duopolies with control over critical infrastructure that needs to be managed for the national interest.
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This sounds good in (soft-libertarian) theory, but it doesn't work in practice in many cases. For many cases, yes, it's absolutely the right approach; it's effective in a market where there's competition to be had, and is less overbearing than price regulation.
However, this is about cable TV, which is a natural monopoly as it's a utility service. The barrier to entry is ridiculously high (you have to string cable to every residential home, and worse you have to deal with right-of-way issues, plus sabotage
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Unfortunately, even in the USA, there is not enough competition. The companies collude with each other for the most part, and bring stuff like this on themselves. It's what happens in a Capitalist economy, sadly.
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How the hell does a government ensure there's enough competition, if there aren't competitors to go around in the first place?
So why don't more competitors enter the market ? Find the barrier to entry, and then remove it.
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So then the government should rip out the last mile of cable to everyone's home and install it themselves?
No, and I never said that.
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What if the barrier is that you need a couple of 10s of millions of dollars to buy and install infrastructure just to get started?
I'd do it, but I don't think I have that much change lost between the sofa cushions. In fact, probably 99% of the people you ask will say the same.
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What if the barrier is that you need a couple of 10s of millions of dollars to buy and install infrastructure just to get started?
Be creative. There's no need to buy the infrastructure, if you can lease it from the current providers.
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Bell and Rogers are forced to lease some of their infrastructure to others, but that still puts newcomers at a disadvantage because Bell and Rogers, as owners of the infrastructure, can undercut them.
I'm sorry, even though I'm basically a free-market capitalist, it's obvious to me that in this case pure free-market capitalism is not going to work. Be pragmatic, not dogmatically ideological.
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Let's not forget that they can take their sweet time fixing problems when it's not one of their customers. Last I heard, the only way for the resellers to communicate with Rogers to fix an issue was to send them an email. There was no tracking system set up, and problems would often take over a week to resolve if it had something to do with the lines. If they really want to shake things up and make things fair, they should force service requirements and deadlines for resolving problems.
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And who is going to provide the competition for the current providers? That's a recursive answer at best.
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So what's the barrier to entry here... oh that's right extremely high initial capital investment coupled with very low per-unit margins resulting in a very long time to make your initial investment back and start earning profits.
Hey wait a second... that's the textbook definition of a natural monopoly.
These kind of industries will never HAVE a "free" market, it's literally economically impossible - a natural monopoly is itself a textbook example of a market failure - a situation where a free and efficient m
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Hey wait a second... that's the textbook definition of a natural monopoly.
So, break it up. Decouple the maintenance of the infrastructure from the cable providers. Have one company (or part of a company) manage the infrastructure, and let other companies provide the content, lease the infrastructure and provide content/bandwidth to subscribers.
Re: wrong solution (Score:2)
That would be government intervention. And it would include siezing property. We can debate whether its a better solution or not but its definitely still intervention and arguably a greater intrusion on liberty.
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That would be government intervention
Obviously yes. You can't have a fair market without intervention. However, the intervention should be limited to playing the part of "referee", making sure the playing field is level, and everybody sticks to the same fair rules.
And it would include siezing property
Splitting it up doesn't mean it's seized. It just means that you tell companies what they can and cannot do with their property.
and arguably a greater intrusion on liberty
I don't consider the liberty to exploit monopolies very worthy of protecting.
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Again, DO SOME RESEARCH. Understand how the industry wo
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The property can be bought - it doesn't have to be seized. If it was paid for by the country in the first place this wouldn't even be an issue.
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And if Donald Trump was an intelligent, thoughtful, decent person the GOP primaries wouldn't be a complete joke.
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Except you can't just take something away from a company that owns it.
Not "just", but if companies are violating anti trust laws, you can enforce regulation. It's been done before.
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extremely high initial capital investment coupled with very low per-unit margins
Meanwhile in the real world, companies like Google wouldnt be erecting fiber to the home isp businesses if the margins were very low. Google literally couldn't come up with anything better to invest the money in.
The communities in which Google is throwing down fiber didnt have any rules in place to stop Google from doing so. Full stop.
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Google, however, did not start that as their first business - they were already very rich, and have always had a habit of being willing to take huge investment risks with long-term returns.
That is an extraordinarily rare business model - and you don't get to cite a rare exception like that as a model because we can't base policies on one in a million events, we need to base them on what the other million do.
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Google, however, did not start that as their first business - they were already very rich,
You are just waving your hands, declaring irrelevant facts as relevant when they are not. You clearly don't know the how and why of business. Google is building ISP's because it has nothing better to do with the money, which means lots of folks also have nothing better to do with large amounts of money. The inevitable competition for which there is currently a
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The barriers to entry are Canada's huge size and low population density. You can't just "remove" them.
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I dunno. I don't subscribe to cable, so for me a fair market value is $0. (Actually negative; you'd have to pay me to watch that crap...)
Yes, in away the big Canadian telcos were subsidized. But it was the only way to get telecommunications infrastructure going in a country like Canada.
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"Find the barrier to entry, and then remove it."
What if the barrier to entry is the very agent that wields the legal power?
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It was a good idea... (Score:3)
Good idea, bad rules allowed the providers to fuck everyone over. In some cases, the packages are priced so high that if you want only some of what you had before it would cost you more. It needs to be fixed. There are a few exceptions like zazeen. But Bell, Rogers, Cogeco, Shaw, Vmedia and so on all went the "you have to get xyz or you can't have it at all." The biggest one is the "you must have your internet service through us, or you can't have the skinny bundle."
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Except in a lot of cases, that's not what's happening. The CRTC are apparently investigating this already, both Bell and Rogers offer TV services that are not IPTV based.
Cost should be $0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Public channels are funded by the public and commercial channels should be paying cable and satellite providers to deliver their commercials to viewers, not the other way around.
Re:Cost should be $0 (Score:4, Informative)
Franchise monopolies... don't give them (Score:4, Interesting)
Allow anyone to run competing cable so long as they obey some simple rules... just like driving etc... and the cable companies won't be able to dick with people.
offer them state backed monopolies and they'll fuck you. Every fucking time.
there is no reason why if I'm reasonable about it, that I shouldn't be able to run a fiber optic cable from my home to the trunk... and I wanted to stop off at every house between myself and the trunk and link up that house to my line... I still don't see the problem if every one of those houses wants to be linked to my line.
I could literally offer everyone along the way, high speed internet for peanuts. And as to obtaining "TV" from that... pretty fucking easy to throw the 20 TV stations someone might care about into a fiber cable.
If a jackhole like me could do it... as in I could do without a learning curve... then a mom and pop ISP could do it too.
But no... as usual. give it to a monopoly and then wait for them to fuck you.
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No you can't. Try it.
Try to run competing cable. Right now. See if you can run cable between point A and point B and connect houses and businesses along that line.
You'll suddenly run into "problems"... mostly that they won't let you run it or more importantly connect houses to the line. Not unless you agree to a franchise agreement which will require you to do other fun things like provide internet service to the ENTIRE city.
That's a bit like saying if I want to open ONE sandwich shop for ONE neighborhood..
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What would you accept as evidence?...
I'm very skeptical of requests for information from ACs on Slashdot because it tends to be followed by ENDLESS goalpost moving if I should actually provide the evidence.
Most ACs when asked what they would accept get very vague or change the subject. This leads me to believe that they were intending to goalpost move and my request for specific qualified information made them uncomfortable.
I do not cite this to you to say that I "know" you were going to do that. Merely tha
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First, implying that you can't make a profit by working for or contracting for the government is... I don't know... Fuckwitted? Consider if you will the "military industrial complex"... or the obviously endless series of businesses and contracts where in the government pays someone to do something and that someone makes a profit doing that.
Now... that silliness out of the way. Did you have parameters you would lead to your concession on this point or am I correct that spending my valuable time to find somet
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so keep trying. maybe you can p
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So what would you accept as evidence? Anecdotal evidence is acceptable? Really? Lock yourself down to what you'll accept. I am tired going through the effort only to have someone arbitrarily change the standards so that the last reference doesn't work. Cite the terms.
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Anecdotal evidence is acceptable? Really?
no. i asked for better-than-anecdotal. so far all you have offered is anecdotal. i already stated why your example of municipal broadband does not in any way support your earlier argument of people being unfairly prevented from starting their own isps.
if you want terms, let's just start with the major news networks. no editorials from them, just news. i'll even let you call fox news a news network if it helps you out. no chat sites though, this has to be something that was actually reported as ne
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So anything better than anecdotal evidence would be accepted?
Define what that means. Do you need a scientific study or would merely a lot of anecdotes be acceptable?
See, anecdotes are generally rejected because they're cherry picked and a few outliers can be misrepresented as the norm. However, a lot of them all at once are generally considered more valid because its harder to cherry pick with lots of examples.
I'm just trying to nail down what you're going to accept. Because my experience is that when peopl
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So, as predicted, the fuckwit ACs won't offer an type of source they'd accept.
Your bad faith in the discussion was predicted and your behavior has validated my wisdom in this matter.
You morons are so predictable... Suck it.
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Anyone can run competing cable, but who is going to run more cable when there isn't enough market to support it?
Why are you worried about running cables to places the market can't support? Are you imagining some sort of fundamental "right" to cable television?
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Waste of $25 (Score:3)
Re:Waste of $25 (Score:4, Informative)
-ABC
-CBS
-NBC
-CBC
-CTV
-PBS
-TVO
-Some French channel I never watched
-Fox
-CHCH
-WB
-City
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Depends on where you live. Lot of places in Southern Ontario you can get all those channels OTA. Seeing people getting 30-50 channels OTA isn't uncommon if you're in say Toronto or Kitchener/Waterloo, or people living along Lake Erie/Michigan/Ontario. Live in northern alberta though? Nope.
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I guess it depends how close you live to a major US City. There's no way somebody in Edmonton is going to pick up ABC over the air. Compare that with Windsor where there's always been a problem getting people to pay for cable because of all the freely available US networks. I'm in Ottawa and most people can't get any US networks unless you get a lot of extra equipment.
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Twenty years ago, we got CKVR, CHCO, and TVO over the air. Channels 3, 11 and 2, as I recall. The antenna was connected to a dial that physically rotated it.
At some point, we got Global TV on channel 7.
Ah, growing up watching Robotech, Thundersub, Star Trek and Captain Power....
What you get for your 25 loonies (Score:2)
The Justin Bieber Channel
The "Arrogant Asshole Speaking Archaic French" network.
"Great White North" with the one surviving McKenzie brother.
The "Mounties Going Full Monty" morning show
Capitalism (Score:2)
Re:Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
If government runs infrastructure - like they're suppose to do - then they can lease out the lines to companies to provide the service. Like the way the FCC licenses the air waves for TV and Radio transmissions.
There are ways forward but the industry opposes it and politicians aren't interested in upsetting their donors.
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Even $25/month isn't true. It's more than that. (Score:2)
The companies are charging an additional $3-$7 / month on top of it for the box.
You know, I've seen Canadian shows on Netflix. And for the most part, the ones that make it there are good. Let cable hang.
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What is cable TV? (Score:2)
And who cares? This seems like a law that would have been relevant in 1993. But now the world has passed it by, and the Canadian government looks like a bunch of out of touch beaureaucrats.
Broken business model (Score:2)
They can tweak all they like but it won't make any difference. The underlying business model is broken Changes in technology will do that.
I pulled the plug on cable years ago. When I look at what's on cable now it's not even the handful of channels I would watch, it's the handful of programs I would watch, since most of the content is garbage. An on-demand setup like Netflix is a much better fit for me.
...laura
I am so happy they screwed this up (Score:2)
Zazeen is an exception (Score:2)
They are offering $10/month + free STB for the first year provided you commit to one year. It comes with 35+ channels, received my STB one or two days later. Works flawlessly. There is also an app to watch on your tablet but support is limited. Nexus (Google) is out, Yoga 3 (Lenovo) is out, Galaxy (Samsung) is ok, Ipad (Apple) is okay.
$25... do you still need a cable box? (Score:2)
Wondering if the channels are all still encrypted, requiring separate fees per-TV for a cable converter, or if Canada was wise enough to mandate they be ClearQAM or something else so people can just connect their set and watch.