How do you like Ignite TV compared to Digital Cable?

[OLDYELLR]

First of all, I'm not an Ignite customer.  In fact, I cancelled Rogers digital cable when I went to an IPTV package from my ISP using fibre that was installed in my area last summer.

My transition was more of a surprise than for most of you moving from Rogers Digital Cable to Ignite TV because I had a SA8300HD PVR on the SARA system, with none of the fancy shmancy graphics of the NAVIGATR interface, but it was simple, user friendly and had several features the later interfaces had dropped.  My legacy VIP also had way more channels, although, unfortunately, not the ones I really wanted.

Here are a couple of annoyances I found switching from Digital Cable to IPTV.

1. When playing cloud recordings I find the FF button skips in bigger steps than it did  with digital recordings on my hard drive.  Do you also see that on Ignite?

2. With my new IPTV service, I find that some SD channels do not display or record with the correct aspect ratio.  TV Ontario is weird because it displays correctly live, but record in SD, horizontally compressed. How is it on Ignite TV?

I ask these questions not only for my own edification, but so Rogers customers switching from Digital Cable to Ignite TV know what they'll be getting, because you can't switch back.

***Added Labels*** 

[Gtheman]

It works but as I said, it is not even close to the ability of the digital system. I also find the sound choppy as well and again, not at all like the digital system.

The initial question was "How do you like Ignite compared..." and the answer is "I don't" My main reason for switching was the bogus offer and to save $35.00 I switched to Ignite.

NOT to recommended in any way.

[Gtheman]

Channels (such as US networks) that can be received via FTA signals, were at one time required to be carried as a basic service. Not now apparently, and I wish I could move back to the Hitron digital box.

[-G-]

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@Gtheman wrote:
Channels (such as US networks) that can be received via FTA signals, were at one time required to be carried as a basic service. Not now apparently, and I wish I could move back to the Hitron digital box.

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This was a VERY recent change:  https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Ignite-TV/Changes-to-Ignite-TV-Channels-in-Packages-and-Theme-...

I'm hoping that Rogers will reconsider this decision.  It just does not make any sense.  This change only affects NEW Ignite TV customers... and Rogers will have a hard time attracting new customers to their service if they continue to make their offerings less and less competitive.

[OLDYELLR]

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@Gtheman wrote:

It works but as I said, it is not even close to the ability of the digital system. I also find the sound choppy as well and again, not at all like the digital system.

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I don't have Ignite, but cloud IPTV from my own phone and internet provider since fibre was installed in my area. I switched from SARA boxes, which had many superior features to the Nextbox 3, like frame-by-frame playback and precise scheduling, but only 2 tuners, of course.  The biggest annoyance I find with IPTV  (and I imagine Ignite is like this) is the fast forward and rewind functions, which jump in bigger steps than the digital PVR did.

[Brehon]

I wasn't happy with Bell Fibe TV, and the arrogance of their "service" people.  I hated that they deal with international call centers, where communication is always a challenge.  Rogers bundles aren't as good, but they are fine, but I wish they'd do something about the Fast Forward and Rewind.  It feels like the old VCRs that take several attempts to get to where you want to be.  You can rewind to a spot, and when you hit play, it skips ahead by up to 2 or 3 minutes.  It's very frustrating. Bell had a better system, where the FF and Rewind were similar to watching videos on your computer.  They stop where you want them, and finding your spot takes seconds, as opposed to minutes.  I call Rogers and asked them if it could be changed, but was told "No, there's nothing you can do".

[OLDYELLR]

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@Brehon wrote:

I wish they'd do something about the Fast Forward and Rewind.  It feels like the old VCRs that take several attempts to get to where you want to be.  You can rewind to a spot, and when you hit play, it skips ahead by up to 2 or 3 minutes.

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I presume you're talking about what you see on Ignite TV.  I don't have Ignite, but IPTV from my own ISP.  FF  and Rewind is definitely inferior to what we saw on Rogers digital cable recordings. I had SARA and could even watch frame-by-frame slow motion on my recordings (which you couldn't with Nextbox). Playback from the IPTV cloud is very limited. You never can hit the exact spot you want and then you have to FF at a slower speed to get there.  Such is the cost of progress.

[Gtheman]

Total rubbish.... less bandwidth, and TV sound which is via wifi, is choppy and breaks up. This requires almost daily reboots of the TV box at best and also the white tower modem, at worst. Total rubbish.. Do NOT get this...

[-G-]

Just did an Ignite TV installation for more family members.  This one involved an XB7 gateway and gen-2 Pods.  Installation went (fairly) smoothly and Ignite TV works beautifully.  Not a single glitch.  Wi-Fi works great throughout the home.  Much better quality than their Digital TV service.  (Ignite TV itself will still take some getting used to but that is to be expected.)

This installation was tricky.  I only had one area where I could place the XB7 gateway and no wall plugs in the ideal location for the upstairs Pod.  The one place where I could plug it in didn't get a great signal from the XB7 and the Pod kept going offline.  (Lots of pipes/plumbing/duct work in the wall between the Ignite gateway and the Pod.)  It took some fiddling (and measuring Wi-Fi strength with a Wi-Fi analyzer) but I was finally able to position the XB7 in such a way that the Pod could get a good signal, and all the living spaces then got a really good Wi-Fi coverage and good Wi-Fi performance.  I could also walk around with a mobile device and get a smooth Wi-Fi hand-off from the gateway to the Pod and back.

This is also a situation where if I moved the XB7 just a short distance to the left or right, Wi-Fi performance would be horrible in parts of the home, and I would have gotten a very different Ignite TV experience.

As I have said many times before, if your Internet service works well and your in-home network and Wi-Fi works well, then the Ignite TV service will work well.

[Datalink]

I'm interested in the 5 Ghz channels that the modem finally settled on and what Wifi mode the modem and pods ended up running, a/n/ax or a/n/ac/ax?  Would you happen know the final details?

[-G-]

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@Datalink wrote:

I'm interested in the 5 Ghz channels that the modem finally settled on and what Wifi mode the modem and pods ended up running, a/n/ax or a/n/ac/ax?  Would you happen know the final details?

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Before installing the Pod, the XB7 gateway auto-selected channel 157.  I locked that channel in and then conducted a site survey.  I don't recall the final channel configurations after installing the Pod, after things optimized and settled.

For me, it doesn't matter whether the APs use channels with the maximum transmit power.  The limiting factor on the quality of the connection will be the transmit power on mobile devices.  I would rather that the device not connect than get a poor-quality connection that will degrade Wi-Fi performance for all devices on that band.

The XB7 and Pod were positioned such that there would still be good Wi-Fi performance, even when using the lower-power channels.  (Using lower-power channels also usually makes roaming and hand-off work better.)

The Wi-Fi mesh was also performing well, so I never had to do any follow-up troubleshooting or optimization.

[-G-]

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@-G- wrote:

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@Datalink wrote:

I'm interested in the 5 Ghz channels that the modem finally settled on and what Wifi mode the modem and pods ended up running, a/n/ax or a/n/ac/ax?  Would you happen know the final details?

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Before installing the Pod, the XB7 gateway auto-selected channel 157.  I locked that channel in and then conducted a site survey.  I don't recall the final channel configurations after installing the Pod, after things optimized and settled.

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The XB7 gateway is currently using channels 1 and 157 on the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands respectively.  The gen-2 Pod is using channels 11 and 44, and would (obviously) be using channel 157 for its wireless backhaul.  I would consider those channel assignments ideal.

My Pod placement is also pretty good.  In the areas that I need it to cover, I'm seeing an RSSI of better than -50 dBm on the 5 GHz band.  It's backhaul connection to the XB7 is not quite that good but still very good.

[Datalink]

Thats not too bad with an RSSI above -50.  Is Bandsteering running?  I'm assuming that it is, and the follow on question to that is what Wifi Mode are the modem and pods are running, a/n/ax on both bands by any chance?  If you ever have a chance to determine that, I'd be interested in knowing what the end result is for the Wifi Modes.

[-G-]

@Datalink  Band Steering is enabled and the gen-2 Pods don't support Wi-Fi 6.

I'm pretty happy with how the installation turned out.  The trickiest part was finding a relatively RF-transparent path between the XB7 and Pod (to get decent backhaul performance) and also positioning them both in such a way that you also get the right signal strengths/coverage in the right areas.  To get good results, it's all about location, location, location.  You need to be very meticulous for the installation to be as optimal as possible, and it can be frustrating when your location choices for the Pod and gateway are limited to some degree.

[Seritoga13]

Ignite is garbage.  It is not even comparable to the service in a third world country.  They are not scared or ashamed to charge a scandalous price for a service that they should be paying their customers to have...

Garbage....

[Gtheman]

Totally agree. Constant reboots of both modem and TV box. Total rubbish.

[thecyclegeek]

I'm annoyed with it.

I was basically told by the rep on the phone that I'd be getting better service, more channel options (plus everything I had before), and better performance. Instead:

- received a TV box which is slower than my Nextbox and with fewer options

- poorer quality TV signals

- unable to set a default starting channel (what year is this?!)

- lost several channels that I had, with no option to re-add them

- an awful remote

- broken channel changing functionality... Harmony Hub no longer works properly with it

- and I'm paying more for it!!!

[senordd]

I think it depends on where you live. I’ve had it for 2 years now and it’s far better than the old digital cable. The only thing about it is that my “live” tv is actually about 30 secs behind due to the buffering of IPTV.

[DaveRobbins100]

I am contemplating going from digital to ignite tv. My problem is I have a 77 inch OLED tv which has a screen which is 40% larger than a 65 inch so imperfections in picture quality are obvious. The current picture quality for channels such as Global is excellent on Digital cable. I have a:b’d from cable to over the air and sometimes the over the air is over saturated and therefore the cable picture is sometimes superior and at worst similar. I also have Bell Fibe tv and since their channels are limited to 720p and 5 Mb/s the picture quality is noticeably inferior to Digital cable. My question is will I lose picture quality by moving to Ignite and will the picture quality be similar to Fibe?

[Gtheman]

I would not if I were you. Ignite is less intuitive, less flexible, less usable in fact. The GUI is less user friendly. The channel line-up for example does not scroll page by page or channel by channel as you prefer, and the channel you are currently watching does NOT appear in the top right corner as you scroll.  I see zero difference in the quality of the picture on my 43" Sony. No difference at all with picture Ignite vs. Digital. Most importantly, is the constant, twice weekly reboots of either the set top box, or the modem or both. Choppy signal as well of course.

The channel line up has no relevance because the channel numbers are different on Ignite.

I could go on but you get the idea. I would not change if I were you, but you will NOT be able to go back to digital is you do. 

Beware.

[toolcubed]

I disagree with most of what was mentioned above. If the Rogers network in your area is working well and your in-home network (WiFi etc) is also working well, then Ignite TV will also work well. I haven’t had any issues specific to Ignite since I switched. My in-home network has always been rock solid but I also use my own 3rd party network gear. And Rogers upgraded their infrastructure in my neighbourhood approx 3 years ago. If you need to reboot the Ignite gateway or tv boxes that often, then there’s definitely something wrong with the setup, in-home network, Rogers network in the area, or any combination of these.

I love the Ignite user interface, guide, layout, and all-in-one voice remote. I didn’t think I’d use or like the voice functionality but the entire family uses it frequently and it’s amazing.

Picture quality on Ignite is better than Digital. My wife (a total non-techie that doesn’t care much for this stuff) noticed it right away after we switched…she was watching one of her shows and said “wow, the picture is so clear!” Streams are encoded at 10Mbps 1080p. There’s also noticeably less compression with Ignite compared to Digital.

I was very skeptical of the switch when I was still on Digital. Only regret I have now is that I didn’t switch sooner. If I was given the option now between Ignite and Digital, I wouldn’t think twice and would choose Ignite hands down.

[MS3]

Been a digital cable subscriber with Rogers since the beginning. I have 8300HD PVR x 3 and the smaller grey HD box (non pvr) x 2. 

As with most still under legacy cable, I was offered a lower price for Ignite TV& Internet package. It made financial sense for me since my legacy plan went up $30 due to expiring promos, and even spending hours on the phone with retention, I could not make anyone give me additional discounts to help me get me down to my original monthly cost. So after more hours getting them to sweeten the deal to have my jump into ignite, I went for it. My appointment is set for this weekend but now I am thinking more and more that I shouldn't do it. After reading all the posts here about this topic, I figured that...

1) I dont want to brick my 5 boxes that I paid a lot for when it was in its prime. (even though I know it is absolutely painful to use ROD with them)

2) I dont want to use up wifi/data just to watch tv. Imagine all those extra signals going through our brains! lol

3) Cable is so stable and not subject to wifi/network issues.

4) My young ones already know how to use the old set up. (3 & 6 yo)

5) I dont want to lose the ability to store shows FOR AS LONG AS I WANT locally. 

What I like about ignite is the talk into remote feature. The lower price. The user interface. 

I was in the Roger's store recently, and i tried to turn the box off and on again just to see how long it takes to boot up. With cable its instant.  I was shocked to see that I cant even power down without having to do so many steps to do it! WTH! I wish there was a way I can revert back to digital if I wasnt happy with IGNITE. Otherwise, I would have no problems giving it a try. But the fact that I would lose cable forever, doesnt sit well with me. 

Anyone on legacy digital able to get promo discounts? I will call one more time, if nothing can be done, I am just gonna cut the cable all together. I am tired of calling Rogers every year to renegotiate. Tired of having features being taken away while costs keep going up. Just tired. After Oct 10 I cant even use Anyplace TV anymore. I use it a lot when I am not home. With this gone, no point of keeping my subscription. I wish Rogers did things for loyal long time customers instead of being essential forced to switch even though I have no need to. Out with the old and in with the new (customers).