A full simsub by CTV for the Super Bowl 2009...
Due to a CRTC Complaint here. No Canadians in the two major cities of Vancouver and Toronto can see any Super Bowl Ads this year, just local ads or CTV program reminders.
That's right, the capitalistic CTV has simsubbed ALL (HD and SD, East and West) signals of NBC for the Super Bowl.
I'd like to quote a forum post from Digitalhome.ca:
"I understand that the CRTC rules the media world in Canada, but the least CTV could do is work with their advertisers do what they do in the US and make commercials entertaining! There should be no reason why we should see the same commercials as we do when you are watching any other crappy CTV show. Most of the commercials are CTV commercials for upcoming garbage. What I am going to do, and I encourage more people to do, is boycott any show or company ad that repeats and that looks like $10000.00 was spent putting it together."
Forget boycotting the Canadian Advertisers, boycott CTV for even trying to restrict the accessibility of US signals.
But, what can we really do? Nothing...
Edit (Feb 26th): Looking through the Wiki history of the talk page for simsubs, I happened upon a person who copy and pasted a bunch of forum messages. Obviously, they were removed but I found one stood out:
"If we pay for US networks, we should have the ability to watch their commercials. Or at least show at least half of the commercials from US. That's part of the super bowl experience."
Couldn't agree more. The cost of your premium US channel subscription should at least cover the losses for Canadian Advertising.
That's right, the capitalistic CTV has simsubbed ALL (HD and SD, East and West) signals of NBC for the Super Bowl.
I'd like to quote a forum post from Digitalhome.ca:
"I understand that the CRTC rules the media world in Canada, but the least CTV could do is work with their advertisers do what they do in the US and make commercials entertaining! There should be no reason why we should see the same commercials as we do when you are watching any other crappy CTV show. Most of the commercials are CTV commercials for upcoming garbage. What I am going to do, and I encourage more people to do, is boycott any show or company ad that repeats and that looks like $10000.00 was spent putting it together."
Forget boycotting the Canadian Advertisers, boycott CTV for even trying to restrict the accessibility of US signals.
But, what can we really do? Nothing...
Edit (Feb 26th): Looking through the Wiki history of the talk page for simsubs, I happened upon a person who copy and pasted a bunch of forum messages. Obviously, they were removed but I found one stood out:
"If we pay for US networks, we should have the ability to watch their commercials. Or at least show at least half of the commercials from US. That's part of the super bowl experience."
Couldn't agree more. The cost of your premium US channel subscription should at least cover the losses for Canadian Advertising.
posted by Jack Zhang at 2/01/2009 06:34:00 PM
12 Comments:
You can get DirecTV. All you need is a valid US adddress for subscription purposes, and then you don't need to put up with the hijackings anymore!!!
Don't know, that might complicate things more. You'd need a legitimate person to pay the bill in the US and unless you have something like a wife in the US, that's a tough one.
(End of this discussion on US satellite in Canada, don't want to dive into dark depths...)
Get and over-the-air antenna if you're close enough to the US. Not only are there no interruptions, but the HD picture is even clearer because the HD feed is at 19.8 Mbps, whereas most BDU's send out HD at 13.3 Mbps.
^Yes, that is the ultimate solution... For people living in Windsor (right by Detroit)... There are not many border towns with American affiliates located that close to the border...
Massive Butcherings
How about 4 big time butchered simsubs in the last little while:
February 8 - Global cuts off the end of the NCAA on CBS and shows the Simpsons while the PGA on CBS is delayed until 3:03 by CBS
February 8 - Sun TV hijacks the NBA on ABC and takes the HD feed and slaps it on the SD channel, resulting in black bars on the top and bottom. Then at halftime, Sun TV loses the HD feed and shows the SD feed on the HD channel, and the HD reduced feed on the SD channel as well, resulting in black bars on the top and bottom, and double black bars on the sides - resulting in a picture about 1/2 the total screensize on a widescreen TV when viewing ABC SD. Also, the sound was 2.0 throughout the entire telecast for the first simsubbed game (Celtics - Spurs). The Lakers - Cavs game was unmolested on ABC and everything was fine.
February 8 - The Grammys on CBS had massive audio dropouts as a result of Global hijacking the feed.
February 9 - Global interrupts FOX's 24 and shows commercials in the middle of the show!
I saw that on the Wiki talk page, so I'm gonna follow up with the same thing I wrote on the wiki:
It'll only get worse as the Academy Awards this Sunday. Looks like CTV wants to carry all their major events live on both coasts to hijack all signals. All CTVglobemedia stations also say that "Due to federal regulations, we can't show the Super Bowl Ads" (it also applies to all CTV assets that aren't local news showing best of reels). What a load of BS, It's them pressuring those regulators to do it in the first place. That Sun TV thing might be only on Bell TV satellite, they're the worst when it comes to simsubs, all simsubbable programming is simsubbed from the uplink center.
Whenever a show is broadcast in 1080i on a major US network (CBS and NBC), and a Canadian network is hijacking but is broadcasting only at 720p, the resulting hijacked feed will be only 921,600 pixels, while a 1080i signal is 1,382,400 pixels, a difference of 460, 800 pixels! This is an inferior feed then, and the CRTC cannot view the picture being of equal or better quality, so the simsub shouldn't happen! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.237.29.125 (talk) 17:03, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
The feed is up-converted to 1080i from 720p, not the opposite, so it's legal, yet still it recompresses the feed. But, the horizontal resolution will decrease from 720 to 540. --Jack Zhang (talk) 23:38, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I see that Bell TV converts everything to 720p, and they simsub nationally. That is wrong. And Shaw and Star Choice convert everything into 1080i, you lose horizontal resolution doing that. --Jack Zhang (talk) 02:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Jack:
I thought a 1080i signal is 1920 x 1080, meaning it has 1920 pixels of horizontal resolution (1920 vertical scan lines), and since each frame is interlaced and drawn 1/60th of a second, it has 540 pixels of vertical resolution (540 horizontal scan lines). Likewise, a 720p signal has 1280 pixels of horizontal resolution (1280 vertical scan lines) and 720 pixels of vertical resolution (720 horizontal scan lines), so if you convert from 720p to 1080i, you actually gain horizontal resolution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.236.62.106 (talk) 00:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Alright, if there's something from the Wiki talk page you'd like me to know, just leave it there and don't copy and paste it as a comment. I'll get to it eventually.
Thanks.
Jack:
If you can't get a US HD net over-the-air in your city, there is one solution for Global simsubs.
StarChoice. They do not currently carry CTV Vancouver HD, Global Vancouver HD or Global Toronto HD, so you will not get simsubs with either channel.
You will not be able to avoid CTV simsubs if you live in Toronto though, but you'll avoid Global ones.
That's again temporary, it'll be fixed once those channels come online onto the service.
Again, There's practically no way you can get a pure unaltered signal of the US networks in the Canadian OTA transmitter areas now.
The bastards at Shaw Direct are now simsubbing Global overtop of everything since they now own Global. It's time to complain to the CRTC - they can't just change their ways and go against policy like this! One has to live within 75 km of an OTA HD transmitter to see HD simsubs!!!
USTV Now... it's great on XBMC!
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