Wayne D's Blog

Unless you have a PVR with a built in guide channel accurate TV listings are more important than ever. TV networks now have a penchant for not maintaining a predictable schedule. They schedule a number of new episodes of a particular program, then perhaps stop showing new episodes for a month or two or show two or three episodes then skip a week or two before showing another new episode. Way back in December 2006 I wrote a blog post about how Yahoo had completely screwed up their TV listings. At the time we switched to the Canoe.ca tv listings because they provided a simple, fast loading TV listing service. Recently Canoe.ca decided to reformat their listing and dispense with the pop up for show details and Ajaxify them with and expanding tab to show details. The redesign has made the ads much more obtrusive in the details pane and they have also dropped the information on when the show is repeating which was very helpful in allowing you to tape a show you might have missed. The listing are still very good, clearly showing whether a show is a repeat or not.

I decided to quickly check Yahoo's listing and was surprised to find that they no longer sucked. They loaded quickly and about the only thing that was missing was a clear indication on whether a show was new or not. The shows in prime time are marked as to whether they are a repeat or not. The ads aren't even visible on the EEEPC screen as they are to the right of the listing column. I'd use Yahoo's TV listings except for one crucial factor. They have the channel line up wrong, instead of TLC one of the few channels I actually watch they list shows from a channel called VIVA. You think that as Rogers Cable partners they could at least get the Rogers channel lineup correct. Unfortunately there is no link on the page to report the problem, just links to precanned FAQ answers. So close, yet so far. Sorry Yahoo TV.

Illustrative screenshots of Canoe.ca TV listings




Screenshots of Yahoo TV listings

I did something today I thought I'd never do, I stopped watching the live streaming of TWIT, This Week in Tech a podcast hosted by Leo Laporte. Ever since Leo started live streaming TWIT Sunday afternoon has been TWIT day. I do my best to be home by 6 so I can watch as the podcast is recorded. Over the past while there has been tension on the podcast because some people think they talk to much about the social media service Twitter. Let me make it clear that I like Twitter, I use Twitter, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/wdawe but Twitter is old news. It was clear that Twitter was becoming old news when Britney Spears signed up and began using it. John Dvorak did his best today to steer the talk away from Twitter to no avail. Finally after almost an hour I gave up and closed the stream. I'll go back to what I did before Leo started live streaming TWIT, download the podcast. That way I can skip over the boring Twitter talk. Venting complete.

I keep hearing about people who don't have a home phone and after looking at the cost of my home phone service I'm wondering if I should ditch my phone wired too. I pay $25.87 a month for a bare phone service with no features. I get perhaps four calls a month from people I want to talk to, the rest are hang ups when we let them roll over to the answering machine. I already have a minimalist cell phone plan paying $11.50 a month. We only have a cell phone in case off car trouble. Both my wife and I drive cars older than five years and having something in case of unexpected breakdown is pretty much required.

I'd drop the home phone entirely except for the times when the kids are home by themselves so what are the options? Rogers home phone is out of the question, they really don't have anything reasonably priced. Their baseline price is $36.31 a month before taxes because they don't offer a phone without call display. They also don't include their $5.95 system access fee in their published price of $29.95 a month. Even with their $10 off a month promotion for 12 months their before tax price is above what I currently pay. Strangely they also have a $1 fee for the 5 cents a minute long distance plan that I currently get for free. Call display is an absolute necessity if you don't have a physical answering machine because otherwise you can't avoid the telemarketers.

I decided to search through some of the options for internet based phone services. Skype costs $2.95 a month but because Skype hasn't worked out a deal with a Canadian telco they can't offer Canadian numbers for incoming calls. I suppose I could give people my cell number for incoming calls and only use Skype for outgoing calls but that seems unnecessarily complicated. It also means if someone calls and wants to chat I'd have to get them off the phone and call them back so I didn't use up my scarce wireless minutes. There are a couple of different services that offer an incoming Canadian number which adds from $5 to $15 a month to the price and adds the complexity of having to deal with two companies. The added issue of Skype's proprietary protocol makes using a standard VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) to ATA (Analogue Terminal Adapter) box that allows you to use your current telephones with your internet based phone service problematic. There are workarounds but they require using two boxes based on my limited research. I don't think the extra complexity is worth the $2 a month it saves. If you want to use internet based phone services a VOIP ATA is almost a necessity. Without this handy little box you are dependent on your computer if you want to make or answer calls.

There is a free VOIP service offered under a number of different names including clearpointtel.ca available that has a Windows only software phone program. They offer but discourage the use of hardware VOIP phones because they are an ad supported service. It looks like the cost for a VOIP ATA is about $150. I am looking to replace my home phone service and a software only solution isn't really what I want. There are a large number of VOIP phone providers that offer service at different price points with different packages. I looked at another providers website and one of the prominently featured testimonials mentioned how the provider had given a different area code than the user had requested, not a good sign. I found the reviews at whichvoip.com to be helpful. ITP provides a 500 outgoing minutes a month plan for $9.99 which includes an ATA adapter for your phone. With their free first month of service and free 12th month of service you can get phone service for $99 a year including many of the additional services that other providers charge for.

The risk you take going with a low cost VOIP provider is that they company will fail and you will be without phone service. The other thing you need to keep in mind is that 911 services vary between VOIP providers, 911 calls work but some VOIP providers provide E911 services which send your address details to emergency services. With E911 you are responsible for updating your address details with the provider. Without E911 emergency services can't locate you if you can't tell them the address so it's important to read the companies 911 disclaimer carefully.

The other question is whether to take my current phone (port) number or not. I'm leaning towards not porting but instead getting a new phone number, that way the two dozen people who do call me get it while the thousands of telemarketers who currently have my current number don't get to call me.

I recently posted a for sale ad on Craigslist and as an afterthought I posted the same ad on Kijiji. I only tried Kijiji because I saw an ad for the site when I logged into Yahoo because I was impatient to approve my Craigslist ad and couldn't wait for Gmail to retrieve it from my Yahoo account. I'm certainly glad I did since three responses to the Kijiji ad and no responses from the Craigslist ad. Perhaps it's because the Kijiji ad showed up on the second page in a Google search for the manufacturers name for sale. I posted both ads in the Electronics section of the respective sites with exactly the same text.

If you have something for sale I'd recommend you give Kijiji a try. I'm also curious to hear about others experience.

When my 15% bundle discount with my cable company Rogers came to an end I took a closer look at my bill and realized that I was paying $61 for my extended basic cable service. At the beginning of March the rates are going up yet again. I decided that reupping for another two years for a platry 5% discount wasn't really something I wanted to do. I am on a grandfathered anaolog service tier that you can't get anymore, the same package on the digital tier is $61.97 a month for the first six months before tax after that it's anyones guess since I can't find the rates anywhere on their website. When you get right down to it there are only 5 channels that I can't get over the air that I watch in the extended basic cable tier. The strange thing is that when I go to the Rogers website it appears that they have a build your own package option as shown in the screenshot below but clicking on the link takes you back to their package page.

I had lunch with some guys a month or two ago. One of them was talking about how he had ditched his cable, but up and antenna and was quite happy with the over the air HD he was receiving. The quality is better because it isn't horrendously compressed like the through the cable HD is.

I really can't tell whether it's the CRTC or the cable companies who mandate this mass bundling of channels that results in these massive package of channels that people don't watch. I think it's really a cozy relationship that lets the cable companies charge more while they carry the CRTC mandated channels. In the past month other than CBC, CTV and Global which I can get over the air I've watched Showcase, Food Network, Space, History and Discovery. The kids watch YTV, Comedy and Teletoon. On Comedy they generally watch Simpson reruns so that one doesn't really count. That's $8.71 a month per channel and I'm not sure they are worth that much for the amount of time I watch them. They spend most of their free time either on the internet or playing video games so I'm not sure that they would miss cable that much.

When the weather warms up I'm going to put up an outside antenna and give over the air HD a try, if there was more streaming video available in Canada I would probably have done it years ago. Now there is enough legal streaming available online that between it and the over the air stuff I should be able to sate my appetite for TV programming. The reality is that most of the time it's the wallpaper in the room while I sit on the couch with the EEEPC and surf the net. Now I need to head off and get caught up on Fringe before it ages off the CTV streaming site. Next time I set my sights on the telephone bill.