There are so many arguments taking place on this site (I...

[rstra]

There are so many arguments taking place on this site (I count three), never quite seen it like this before. 

[mdk]

@bordoodle -- Which obviously you DID NOT READ.

There is a lot of "chaff" within what you wrote. Sorry if I missed the "wheat".

It is a duopoly -- Rogers & Shaw & Comcast use the same hardware, while Telus uses different hardware.  I don't know what hardware Bell uses, but it's probably the same as Telus.  

So, unless Telus/Bell merges with Rogers/Shaw (if the CRTC would allow it), or if you switch to Telus/Bell, there is no economic alternative to using the Comcast hardware. Imagine the cost for Rogers/Shaw to update their existing infrastructure (replacing all their "last mile" coaxial cables with fiber), should they switch away from using the Comcast hardware.  Like it or not, if you stay with Rogers/Shaw, you are stuck with the Comcast hardware. Telus would gladly accept you as a new customer, if you choose to "move on" away from Rogers/Shaw. 🙂 

[mdk]

@rstra -- interesting Wikipedia article:  one bad apple will spoil the whole barrel.

REF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_apples

A variant of this proverb traces back to the year 1340.

Certainly, the recent years of COVID, the global warming crisis, and the forest-fires across Canada, are stressing-out some people, causing them to be intemperate in their posted messages.

The Fire Chief in Westbank (BC) has said that it feels like they are fighting 100 years of fire at the same time. Ouch.

[rstra]

@mdk  Well, in this case, I think of few of us can take responsibility.

[mdk]

@rstra -- you are correct.  I think that there are only a "of few of us" with either the Master or Grand Master appellation.

[bordoodle]

I said that I was done with this but since the last few replies have shifted from finger pointing at CTV and moved on....

I have read as many posts as I could on anything CTV that came up in a search.  Based on everything I found I started throwing things  against the wall to see what would stick.  If I have missed someone's post about their specific channels and times I apologize.  What sticks is that CTV has taken a hit when in fact there are some 6+ channels are showing the SAME and sometimes DIFFERENT problems. 

Near the start of one thread someone mentioned garble / fuzzy picture on CTV over the air (HD TV antenna).  Their observations were valid but it seems to be a coincidence based on all the other channels having issues.

I do not expect Shaw (Rogers) to read any of these discussions and so I have drilled down directly with Shaw.  To the point that supervisors understand there is an ongoing problem and one especially mentioned that this is system wide and also the connection to Comcast.  CSRs, however, (those first people that answer phones or chats) are not well informed.  Many usually start with "let's unplug things for 30 seconds.  Shaw gets the blame for extremely poor customer service.

As for changing out the last mile forget it but not based on cost.  It will NOT fix the underlying problem which is the head end.  Coax can and does carry more data (channels) than the present fiber implementation.  Compare coax bringing 80 channels into your house to a digital implementation.  80 channels at my observed rate of 10 Mbps (1080p) bursting to 15+Mbps means that you need 800 Mbps plus another, maybe, 200-400 Mbps bursting bandwidth coming in digitally.  That consumes or oversubscribes your 1 Gbps service and makes your 1.5 Gbps service useless for web surfing.  Now add some 4K channels and your 1 Gbps or 1.5 Gbps is now oversubscribed.  Oh and there are people out there with 300 Mbps service so now they don't get TV.

So you understand that going streaming you CANNOT have all channels sent simultaneously.  You MUST have a system where your TV box requests a channel and then the one and only channel is sent to the TV box.  This scales nicely up if you have 2 or 3 TV boxes as you will not oversubscribe even a 300 Mbps service.

If you wish to do digitally the same as the old coax analog system you need fiber to be upgraded to 10Gbps service all the way through to the last mile.  Until that happens we have the present system be it Shaw/Rogers and Comcast or Telus, Netflicks, Disney, etc because technically nothing else works.  Comcast hardware works on coax and can easily work on fiber because its just IP.  The Physical Link Layer 1 is hidden from layers 2 and up.

Lets hope Comcast and Shaw get this fixed as my wife just tried going to Channel 101 Global news at 11 PM and had to do channel up, channel down 20 times before the news displayed.

[mdk]

@bordoodle --Coax can and does carry more data (channels) than the present fiber implementation.

Really? In theory, fiber transmits at the speed of light, which is faster than transmitting over the copper at the centre of a coaxial cable.  So, maybe, the current implementation does not use the light-speed capability of fiber ???

Compare coax bringing 80 channels into your house to a digital implementation. 80 channels at my observed rate of 10 Mbps (1080p) bursting to 15+Mbps means that you need 800 Mbps plus another, maybe, 200-400 Mbps bursting bandwidth coming in digitally. That consumes or oversubscribes your 1 Gbps service and makes your 1.5 Gbps service useless for web surfing. Now add some 4K channels and your 1 Gbps or 1.5 Gbps is now oversubscribed. Oh and there are people out there with 300 Mbps service, so now they don't get TV.

That is incorrect. Shaw uses a separate channel to the cable-modem, so that it does not interfere with all the other channels bringing TV channels to your set-top TV box. 

I have had Shaw TV, with 100+ channels, since the very beginning, when I signed-up for "Shaw Internet 5". Yes, FIVE, and my TV service was fine. At that time, the Shaw cable connected directly to my TV, and my TV's tuner selected the channel -- there was no set-top TV box. That TV service was (uncompressed) "analog", not (compressed) "digital". 

Then, Shaw rolled-out a set-top box that could process the compressed signals. Every Shaw TV customer thus needed to install their first set-top box, if they wanted to receive those channels. This meant that the TV's tuner became mostly-redundant -- set it to Channel 3, and keep it there. Use the set-top box to select a channel, and that selection was delivered on Channel 3.

Finally, it is the provisioning of the cable-modem that throttles your Internet traffic to match what speed you have contracted-for with Shaw Internet. If you wanted to upgrade to faster Internet, Shaw would remotely reprovision the cable-modem -- no need for them to make any physical changes, via a "site-visit" by a Shaw technician.

[bordoodle]

>>Really? In theory, fiber transmits at the speed of light, which is faster than transmitting >>over the copper at the centre of a coaxial cable.  So, maybe, the current implementation >>does not use the light-speed capability of fiber ???

Assume fiber at C and coax at 0.8C.  You still receive 1 Gbps but with coax the bits are just a bit slower in transit.  But you STILL receive 1 Gbps.

My exact words are “ than the present fiber implementation.”  Big distinction.  I am talking bandwidth available over the medium (speed in transit has no bearing) based on how coax and fiber deliver services.  Coax has multiple frequencies sent which are multiple TV channels plus a channel for Internet (75 or 300 Mbps, 1 or 1.5 Gbps) and a back channel again for Internet (and now streaming TV over that, again at 1 channel at a time).  With fiber there is just Internet (at 1 Gbps the present implementation) which also streaming TV comes over but at 1 channel at a time.  Not 100+ as you mention below.  If the content providers supply 10 Gbps to residential then you could send all TV channels down the fiber like coax.  That would be just as costly as Shaw replacing coax with fiber.

>>That is incorrect. Shaw uses a separate channel to the cable-modem, so that it does >>not interfere with all the other channels bringing TV channels to your set-top TV box. 

Oh I get that.  If you have 1 Gbps service with Shaw over coax it is EXACTLY THE SAME as getting 1 Gbps fiber service from Telus.  The difference with Shaw is that there is a not only a forward channel and back channel just for TCP/IP (Internet) plus all the RF channels for TV.  With Telus you get just TCP/IP but there is NO PROVISION to carry extra things like TV channels, like Shaw does with coax.

With your 100+ TV channels as mentioned below then digitizing all of it to run over fiber the same way Shaw does with RF over coax requires at least 1 Gbps with bursts beyond 1.5 Gbps for 1080p.  Add in 4K and you could start straining 2.5 Gbps.  This is why anyone offering fiber to the home with Internet and  TV MUST use TV boxes that request just 1 channel at a time.  If you change channels it takes a couple of seconds to send the channel request and then get the stream back.  With the older cable boxes, PVRs, etc, when you change channels it is displayed immediately as its already being received in your home. 

>>I have had Shaw TV, with 100+ channels, since the very beginning, when I signed-up >>for "Shaw Internet 5". Yes, FIVE, and my TV service was fine.

You, again, have missed the point.  Those 100+ channels were received in your house ALL THE TIME.  It doesn’t matter if there was no decoding as all channels were analog dozens of years ago or today when you need an ARRIS or other box to decode all the compressed RF (TV) channels. Your 5 Mbps was just another hidden channel mixed in with all the rest as it still is today.  Your old 5 Mbps service could NOT have supported streaming TV that we now have.

>>Then, Shaw rolled-out a set-top box that could process the compressed signals. >>Every Shaw TV customer thus needed to install their first set-top box, if they wanted >>to receive those channels. This meant that the TV's tuner became mostly-redundant ->>- set it to Channel 3, and keep it there. Use the set-top box to select a channel, and >>that selection was delivered on Channel 3.

That doesn’t change a thing.  Eons ago or today all the channels came in simultaneously.  You view or decompress one of those as they are all present simultaneously.

With streaming, as I have mentioned above ad nauseum, you CANNOT get 100+ digitized (IP based) channels over anything available today with Shaw, Telus, Comcast, Rogers, Netflix, any one.  You can’t put 8 pounds of s$%t into a 5 pound bag. Therefore you have to use streaming boxes that send a request for a channel and then wait for the stream to be sent.  If an IP packet gets dropped the channel request and subsequent stream doesn’t happen.  If a corrupted packet happens then you could get looping and other problems reported by other users in other cities.  TCP/IP is subject to bad / corrupted packets.  In the TCP stack there is a retransmit timer.  If an acknowledge / response packet is not received then a timer starts to eventually trigger a retransmit.  That could be within a couple to many seconds later.  How long depends on how the TCP stack was coded.  That could be the source of the looping that people are experiencing.  An acknowledge packet was lost so the TV box just repeats what it has in its buffer.  Who knows.

>>Finally, it is the provisioning of the cable-modem that throttles your Internet traffic to >>match what speed you have contracted-for with Shaw Internet. If you wanted to

Way off topic. 

It still comes down to CTV, CTV2, Global, TLC and ABC, and maybe others, are all glitching and Comcast and Shaw/Rogers have to fix it.  No more suggestions of things try in your house be it plugging TV boxes directly into the Gateway, powering down for 30 seconds, going onto or off of WiFi, swapping TV boxes around the house to see if the problem moves with the box.  NOTHING FIXES THIS !!!!

Again from Shaw:

This is a national issue - not just with your box.  It is still being worked out with our software server partner - Comcast in the US.

[mdk]

@bordoodle -- With the older cable boxes, PVRs, etc, when you change channels it is displayed immediately ...

Not necessarily. With my older Gateway HDPVR, my (older & plasma) TV screen goes blank for around 5 seconds, as the TV "buffers" the newly-selected incoming channel, before displaying audio/video. This happens because the input stream is "incremental" -- only what has changed in the last 1/60 of a second is sent to the TV.  So, the TV has to collect a lot of data, in order to show a "complete" image.

> Your old 5 Mbps service could NOT have supported streaming TV that we now have.

It depends onto which device you are streaming. If you are using your computer to receive/display that 5 Mbps stream, it is possible to see "jerky" video if the incoming stream is being sent at over 5 Mbps.  But, many YouTube videos are not being sent at that speed.

> TCP/IP is subject to bad / corrupted packets. 

Not correct. While IP is subject to packet-loss and corruption, it is "Transmission Control Protocol over Internet Protocol" that checks for bad check-sums on each packet, and requests a "re-send" of a bad packet, and requests a "re-send" of a "missing" packet. Thus, TCP is the solution for issues with IP packets.

[bordoodle]

>>Not necessarily. With my older Gateway HDPVR, my (older & plasma) TV screen goes blank for around 5 seconds, as the TV "buffers" >>the newly-selected incoming channel, before displaying audio/video. This happens because the input stream is

I don’t care about your old equipment be it TV or older Gateway / PVR that came over in the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.  My statement is based generally what is happening now. 

>>It depends onto which device you are streaming. If you are using your computer to receive/display that 5 Mbps stream, it is possible >>to see "jerky" video if the incoming stream is being sent at over 5 Mbps

Again I’m pointing to the underlying technology and what works now.  And jerky, looping, blanking TV is what we are discussing on TVs based on Shaw right now.  We are NOT TALKING about your computer and what you may be willing to watch.

>>While IP is subject to packet-loss and corruption, it is "Transmission Control Protocol over Internet Protocol" that checks for bad check->>sums on each packet, and requests >>a "re-send" of a bad packet, and requests a "re-send" of a "missing" packet.

They may be using UDP which if they are we are in for a really long, bad haul.  Dropped packets could be causing some of the problems that we are seeing on TVs right now.  BUT the retransmit timers, based on how long that value is set for could also be causing problems.  Malformed packets from the streaming server, that pass the CRC checks, could also be causing problems.  Hardware and software engineers from Comcast have to sift through all of this.  If the code was written or hardware designed by a group across the pond (ie. cheap labour) then we may be in for a longer haul.  I have had direct experience with hardware problems from across the pond and how things must be presented to get a fix.

I joined this to find where the problem was, how big the problem was beyond you and everyone else who thought it was just CTVs video send to Shaw.  Also my intent was to provide information for the continued comments by others (and you who admitted to not reading) that any and all suggestions short of “its Shaw’s problem” would not fix these issues.

 I’ve done my best, Shaw is aware, and I’m not going down any more nit picking rabbit holes.  Move on.  Its Shaw's problem and we have to be, unfortunately, patient.