ADG wrote: 3Web offers cable internet in both Rogers and Shaw territory.
Thanks for the update, ADG. I hadn't been paying that much attention lately.
Looking at their offerings, I see that 3Web offers both ADSL and cable Internet. They are the first I've heard of anywhere to do that. But, again, I don't keep up like I did when I contracted for TELUS in the late '90s, so I may have missed someone.
Personally, for Internet, I gave up on TELUS when they accidentally deleted my account and told me I couldn't get it back for 90 days. But my real issue with them is their stupid software that checks every packet to be sure you aren't using any other MAC addresses than the ones you registered. It only works properly with certain Windows drivers on NICs and routers, and randomly doesn't respond on others. It took me 6 months until I found a tech. at TELUS who told me to throw everything away and buy D-Link. And, he was right -- everything suddenly worked properly after that.
I've been extremely happy with Shaw for the last two years, even upgrading to their $10 extra service (which is still cheaper than what I paid TELUS) to get 2-3Mbps extra in speed, and a much better modem.
I don't want the eyesore that a dish represents, nor the frequent bad reception issues that friends complain about, so I am happy with Shaw cable, including digital cable, though I will be exploring, in the New Year, the possibility of getting digital signals for the standard analogue channels. That is how their new cheap digital cable box is supposed to work, but I don't want to lose the extra quality I get from S-Video cables, which the new box doesn't have. At least for my Motorola DCT2500, the composite video signal is very clearly worse than the S-Video signal for any given channel, when viewed on my new Westinghouse 32" wide screen LCD TV that I got on sale for $799 a few months back when my 20 year old Sony monitor started showing signs of the power supply giving up.
I should also mention that Galaxie's Rock and Roll (pre-1968) channel, free on digital cable, has really, really improved since I last listened to them for any length of time (5 years ago). Previously, they played the same stuff every 22 or 23 hours.
Now there seems to be no discernible pattern and they even include great stuff like a wonderful Jackie Wilson B-side that was a minor R&B hit in the late '50s. And some pre-rock doo wop.
I've been experimenting with burning some DVDs of them, as the video (the title every minute or so) compresses so well that you can probably get close to 12 hours on a single DVD at relatively high speed with very good audio quality.