Posts Tagged ‘rogers’

I’ve always had a certain disdain for Rogers and that fact they’ve pretty much taken control of the media in Canada but I just saw on the news today that they run a “Pumpkin Patrol” on Halloween :

And for the 23rd straight year, the Rogers Pumpkin Patrol will be going out along with them to ensure they don’t get into anything too scary. The safety guardians gave an annual preview of their handiwork at Toronto Police Headquarters Friday, revealing there will be 150 vans and 300 employees fanning out across the GTA on October 31st to keep an eye out when your kids don’t.

It’s a great service but what shocks me is that it’s in it’s 23rd year! Seriously??!!? It’s the first I’ve ever heard of it and I am still young enough to remember going trick or treating.

As a followup to my previous post, I noted that Rogers has provided a opt out for their “custom Rogers/Yahoo” search page. I was a little too soon to give them credit for it as I proceeded to select the opt out option and now I see this standard Internet Explorer looking “Cannot find server” page. BUT – notice the url address is http://www20.search.rogers.com/not_found. Rogers has simply created a fake Cannot find server page as their version of opting out of their service. What a joke. Rogers does it again!

I had heard that Canadian ISPs had begun to customer error pages with there own custom error page laced with their corporate advertising. This apparently pushes the net neutrality limits, in fact some claim it violates it.

I first noticed Rogers hijacking my browser when it first implemented it’s 60GB download cap per month. Once I reached 75% usage, a message would appear at the top of browser page indicating this with a check box to confirm I had read the message. Now I just noticed today that typing in www.asfdasd.com (or any other domain that does not exist) will yield you a custom Rogers/Yahoo Search page.

One thing that I noticed on the bottom was a link to “Learn More About this Page” which provides an opt out option:

These search results were provided because the domain name you entered into the address bar is either improperly formatted, currently unavailable, nonexistent, or part of a key word search. Rogers Supported Search Results is a service designed to enhance your web surfing experience by eliminating many of the error pages you encounter as you surf.

No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.
Click here if you would no longer like to receive the Rogers Supported Search Results service.

I’ve never been happy with Rogers. In fact, my disdain has become worse and worse lately with many of their actions. I’ll at least give them credit for providing an opt out option which I have just done.

You have successfully changed the selected landing page returned from the Rogers Supported Search Results service. If you would like to revert back to the default results page, simply delete your “search.rogers.com” cookie or return to options.search.rogers.com

NOTE: If you delete your cookies, or use a program that deletes cookies, you will have to repeat this process every time your cookies are deleted.

Unfortunately, all it does it put a cookie on your system. Every time you delete your cookies you’ll have to repeat the process of manually opting out. Sad Rogers, just sad.

There is no doubt that the iPhone being released in Canada on July 11th will be huge. Regardless of price or plan, lots of fanboys, tech nerds and kids with rich (or dumb?) parents will get there hands on it.

The highly anticipated price plans have been released on the Rogers website. Notice that there is no unlimited data transfer like our friends in the US get as well as the basic extras cost extra. (call display, evenings at 6pm rather than 9pm, etc). It looks like for a decent plan, you are looking at paying at least $100 a month, probably more. Don’t forget the extra charges as you are watching Youtube videos that push you past your cap!

Check out the tons of comments which are even more entertaining and basically comes down to everyone saying “F YOU Rogers”.

http://www.blogto.com/tech/2008/06/rogers_iphone_plans_revealed/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/27/rogers-announces-iphone-3g-plans-unlimited-data-isnt-one-of-th/

In fact, it has even spawned  a brand new site http://www.fuckyourogers.com/

It would be interesting to see how the iPhone does in Canada. Unfortunately, it seems the Canada is far behind that of the United States in this regard as there is very little competition here.

Looks like Bell is jumping on the movie download bandwagon, ala Apple iTunes, Microsoft xbox 360 , Netflix, etc. Interesting arguments from the article in regards to this announcement and in the CRTC investigation on their own peer-to-peer throttling practices. Now I wonder when Rogers will follow suit with their own movie download offering.

Rogers has recently instituted a policy of enforcing download caps for customers. If Rogers were to offer movie downloads, it makes you wonder how they enforce internet usage, yet promote extensive movie downloading which would no doubt take a huge chunk of bandwidth. Then again, Rogers seems to have the reputation for not caring for customers as they continue to grow and expand into new media businesses. I’ve had a few run ins with Rogers myself that has recently led me open up their “iron grip” as much as possible by canceling my cable service and look at other alternatives.

It is nice to see that Canada is slowly catching up to the online media that our US neighbours enjoy so much. We can probably blame a lot on the CRTC’s restrictions. Let’s just hope that there’s some additional competition to keep Bell and Rogers on their toes.

As some of you may or may not have heard, I recently canceled my Rogers Cable Television service. After doing some online research, found that there are many HD Over the Air (OTA) signals that are free for use if you have the right equipment can be setup very easily. The number of channels and signal strength depends on your location. The ideal location is if you have the ability to aim an antenna south with line of sight to the CN tower. Lucky for me, my apartment is up on the 18th floor and faces south, and I have some sight of the CN tower so I thought I would give this a shot after seeing that you can make a “HD antenna” using a piece of wood and coat hangers!

Things you need:

1. HD capable television (obviously)
2. If your HD tv does not have a built in ATSC tuner, you will need to buy a separate set top box. Ebay is a good place to find one for about $100.
3. Screws, coat hangers, piece of wood and maybe 20 minutes of your time

Follow the simple tutorial to build your own HD antenna:

Tutorial to build own antenna:

The final result (sorry about the quality….I had to take them with the camera phone):

Looks kind of ghetto but suprisingly works great.

Just about every sport looks great now.

In the end, I got 20 totally OTA channels with 12 in HD. Very happy with the results. Once you go HD, you can’t go back!

More useful links:

http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?t=461924
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=81

I hate Rogers. I also hate the fact that they own me. I have Internet, Wireless and Cable Television with them, paying over $150/month. Well today, I canceled Rogers Cable Television and it felt great. Why you ask? Well I managed to get free over the air HD tv channels that look great and once you go HD, you can’t go back. Coming soon will be how I got those free LEGAL HD channels. Stay tuned.