Have you ever had a point in your life where you realize your getting ripped of BADLY. The ripping off is kind of similar to sex with a vacuum, it seems like a great idea at first… hell, it might even feel great for a short period of time. The vacuum I’ve been fucking is Shaw Cable, and I’ve finally reached that point where the vacuum has sucked my balls into the tube and wrapped them awkwardly and painfully around my dick.
It all started with the purchase of my first HDTV, I had this great new technology and very little HD content. Longing for a constant source of crisp and visually pleasing content I decided to buy my first HD cable box. It felt good at first, I was able to watch two shows I cared about (Late Night w/ Conan O’Brien and Heroes) and a bunch of other crap that I didn’t care about. About 99% of the TV I’ve watched over my past year and a half with Shaw Cable has been standard-def programming and any of the HD channels (and their HD channels should NOT be called HighDef). Without getting into a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo I’ll just put it this way: Shaw compresses the SHIT out of their channels, this reduces the quality of the channels to the point that it looks worse than a DVD. Their OnDemand service is expensive, unreliable, and flaky (sound a lot like every relationship I’ve ever been in, ever).
Here is a quick list of the shit i’ve gone through with Shaw Cable over the past year and a half:
- Macroblocking (the signal drops and the image turns into a bunch of random boxes)
- Temporary Audio Dropouts (the audio drops out randomly for a few seconds, this happens A LOT)
- Extended audio dropouts (this happens less frequently, but when it happens I have to change the channel and back again or restart the digital receiver)
- ShawOnDemand giving me the wrong movie (I’ve ordered ShawOnDemand a few times and had the wrong movie start to play…. NO, I DONT WANT TO FUCKING WATCH TMNT AGAIN!)
- ShawOnDemand HD Movies are expensive (anywhere from $6 to $10 for a fake HD movie, the quality is nowhere near as good as HD-DVD or BluRay [Fuck you BluRay, HD-DVD was a better format] )
- Terrible User Interface (Both the channel guide and the ShawOnDemand menu are terrible. They’re about as slow as a shit coming out sideways and there is no easy way to search for shows or movies… The shawondemand.ca website is slightly better than the PVR menu system, but its still like trying to open a door without any arms)
You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m slightly unsatisfied with my service. It wouldn’t be a bad service, if it were free… but unfortunately, its not. My bill for this month is about $162. This bill is for Shaw Cable, Shaw Internet, 3 OnDemand movies, and about $7 worth of extra one-off programming. Shaw tries to organize the bill to make it look like your getting a deal: “Entertainment Bundle: $110″, “Internet Service: $5″ “Digital Service: $17″… the list goes on. Hold up a second… Internet service $5? Holy fucking shit I’m getting cheap internet! What Shaw is doing here is shitting in my mouth and calling it a sundae.
Shaw tries to make it looks like I’m getting a deal by saying I’m getting internet for $5, but in reality half of the Entertainment bundle covers the cost of internet. To top it off, they are charging me $17 for “Digital Service”. Most people would overlook this, I overlooked this at first. Having Shaw charge me for “Digital Service” is like me paying to have sex with an fugly chick with crabs. By making the switch to digital, Shaw is able to push more channels to their customers (because of video compression, digital TV takes less bandwidth than analog TV). Thanks to me choosing to use a service that in the long run makes it easier for Shaw to provide me with content, I get to pay them more… this is ass-backwards, if anything they should be charging analog customers more.
My time with Shaw Cable is coming to an end, I’ve put up with Shaw because it’s nice to have something to watch when I get home from work. Thanks to Apple’s TV/Movie downloads and Revision3’s amazing programming I can get cheap or free content when I want it (and I don’t have to worry about getting my cocknballs sucked into the vacuum that is Shaw).
Shaw, you are quickly becoming irrelevant as a TV content provider. You have nobody but yourself to blame. You’ve provided a terrible service and you screw your customers by charging them an arm and a leg (especially your early adopters). Think about this when your looking towards the future… Shaw executive you are old, you think that your target demographic thinks like you… they don’t. The new customers you will be getting in the future will mostly consist of young adults, people that have just moved out of their parents house. They know how to acquire alternative content, they want the latest and the greatest, and they are A LOT smarter than you. If your provide an unreliable service at a high cost they will go elsewhere (Hulu).
It’s time for this bitter man to pull his swollen genitalia from the vacuum of Shaw. Apple, Revision3, and hopefully Hulu (its not available in Canada yet) will be the melted butter I’ll pour down the vacuum tube to make pulling out less painful.
– Angry Canadian
