View from 54North

In previous posts I recounted my trials and tribulations getting new Telus Optik bundled TV/Internet/Phone installed. That didn’t go so well.  But now that it is installed, what do I think of it and how is it working?

Pretty good actually.

Firstly, lets deal with phone and internet which haven’t changed that much. Phone service is the standard telco land line, rock solid reliable and it stays up even when the internet and TV go down or the power goes out. The internet is much the same, but rated at 15 Mbps and generally provides over 10 Mbps. I’ve always been very happy with Telus internet, and found it more reliable than people I know using Shaw… however that’s a purely subjective assessment. Still, if you are  satisfied with Telus internet now you will be happy with it as part of Optik.

Now, about the TV.

I’m very happy with the actual Telus Optik product.  By and large the way the channels are bundled makes sense so that you don’t end up with a lot of stuff you have no interest in just to get the channels you do want. News channels are bundled together, as are “education” channels like discovery and national geographic. (The big exception to this seems to be OLN which is bundled with re-run sports channels.) You get any HD channels included if you have the standard definition channel as well – with shaw we were paying extra to get HD even if we had the standard def channel.

The menu system has a few quirks, but I find it much faster than Shaw, especially for Video On Demand. It is clearer, updates quicker and allows  you to see trailers easily. The guide has numerous options for search and display and is very flexible.  You can , for example, search for all shows that have Johnny Depp in them. Once you find the show you can search for all the times that show is coming on … and this is where it gets interesting … press a button to record it. The key to the Optik system is the PVR and he way all the set top boxes communicate with each other as computers on the local network. In effect all TV, on demand rentals, and recordings reside in the master PVR, which works as a server for all the other boxes.

There is a limitation to this system though, and that is that you can only have 3 simultaneous live feeds, watching or recording. For most people this will probably never be an issue, but as we have 4 TV’s with potential of 4 different people watching 4 different programs it is something our household needs to take into account. What we have done is to record programs where possible, and to do that recording outside of the 6pm to 10pm “prime time” period.  This has meant we watch primarily recorded tv allowing us to skip commercials. For myself in means I watch more TV,  but better TV; I never watch something just because it is ‘on’.   It also gives us complete freedom to stop or start watching, or share VOD rentals at any time and on any TV in the house.  This is not something that we could do with the Shaw system even at higher cost, as it is, as we share the cost we actually save a considerable amount of money.

Other nice features:

• Movies are cheaper than on Shaw.
• The Telus Music Room – this gives you all of the Galaxy digital music channels, but it also gives you radio stations from all across Canada
• You can buy individual channels at about $2.00 each
• You can program your PVR from any computer with web access, even across the world.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the service, if not the install, and would recommend it to anyone looking to have 3 or more TV’s. In my opinion the Shaw product cannot compete in this area.  For 1 or 2 tv’s your choice of phone or internet bundle might factor in, but certainly Telus is now comparable to Shaw in terms of picture quality and channels provided.