TORONTO - December 13/2010 - “The Leafs won tonight” (Saturday) against Montreal Canadiens, said one excited hockey fan as they walked out of the Air Canada Centre (ACC) and his friend said “Maybe it’s because it was in 3D” as they beat Canadiens 3-1 in the first ever NHL 3D game across Canada on CBC.
There was a big hype as it was announced recently that the game would be in 3D (and broadcast on several networks, but you needed a 3D television and glasses) and the Leafs didn’t disappoint the fans. There were six 3D “camera rigs” stationed around the ACC sponsored by Panasonic Canada and CBC which gave it extra special feeling for those able to watch the upgrade for the first time from their homes. The second game in 3D will be the outdoor Heritage Classic in Calgary on February 20th when the Flames host the Montreal Canadiens at McMahon Stadium.

If you didn’t have a 3D set for Saturdays game you still have a chance to get one by February and they start at around $2000 and can be used as an HD TV as well when 3D is not available, and Panasonic sells the plasma TV in 46 or 50 inch sizes.
Panasonic Canada General Manager Ian Kilvert was in attendance and offered some technical information about the whole process for 3D delivery.

“The nice thing about it is not just for 3D it’s just that the small percentage of the time you are watching a 3D program whether it’s a blue ray 3D movie or a sporting event like hockey you just switch it with the remote control to 2D and watch high definition it’s the best high definition set we’ve ever made.

All images are © COPYRIGHT - All rights reserved - with “DMB” Watermark.
Some concerns have been studied and questioned that the 3D signal can effect some people with headaches and vertigo after watching a full show. Kilvert mentioned, “I read something early on that said about 5% of the population isn’t comfortable watching 3D, so I look at it and say that 95% is, so there is a market there and I feel it’s unfortunate for those 5% who are watching it that can’t, and may get vertigo but it is a very small minority.” It has been reported that the way 3D works is it tricks the brain with the double image which gives the full impact of 3D.

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Well it’s not real news, but it will lighten your day, while you go through the lineup scans at the airport.

TORONTO - It has been brought to our attention at First City Bank of Toronto that banking customers have been sneaking into the bank with suspected explosive devices and with this, we felt it necessary to bring in a new screening procedure for all banking customers and start full body scans and pat-downs.

We got the idea from the TSA in the USA.

Toronto, CANADA - November 24/2010 - We realize we have bullet proof glass around the tellers, but it was discovered this may not withstand the explosive nature of an explosive device, so we felt it necessary to institute these new procedures. Please be patient and understanding as we will be as discreet as possible, although we may have to “grope” some persons who we feel are concealing any kind of contraband (ie. bombs)

You will have the option of going through our full body scan which is “allegedly” safe, and the radiation is very minimal (so we say,) and if we don’t find the suspected explosive we will do a public, full body pat-down, if you don’t comply, we will freeze all your funds in all your bank accounts, and if you were to die in an explosion, we have the right to your full estate if you die while being a customer of  First City Bank of Toronto.
It has also been brought to our attention that the full body scan does not detect explosive materials, we feel it is then necessary to do a very thorough pat-down checking all “junk” on all passengers, I mean customers.

This is not a joke, since we do not conduct such stringent policies unless it is absolutely necessary and although we are not any part of the Federal Government we feel it is appropriate to conduct these new security measures.

If you fail to comply after entering the lobby of the Bank, the armed security staff, with the full force of the Federal Government will wrestle you to the ground and if need be, they will “taze you man,” and you will have no recourse but to comply.

I’m sorry, but because of this new ruling by our head office, we cannot provide private pat-downs (we never even thought of that) and they will be conducted right in front of the other customers lined up as they enter the banking tellers area.

We realize this may seem to some to be a little extreme, we just can’t take the chance of someone blowing up our bank with the fact that we have so much cash on hand (mostly $100 bills.)

Please understand, it was not our idea to bring in these new rules and we do admit that this new procedure may not be able to detect any kind of explosives, but we feel this will make everyone else entering the bank “FEEL” much safer, and that is one of our most important customer service features to make our customers, “FEEL SAFE.”
If you start going through the scanning or pat-down procedure, you are agreeing to all the terms and if at any point you decide to change your mind and want to leave the bank, that will NOT be allowed, on instructions from our HEAD OFFICE. Please do not get upset at our rank and file employees, as they do not set the company policy, they are only following instructions from our head office, and they are just being paid minimum wage. Employees will be supplied with sterile gloves (this is for the employees protection, not yours) to conduct the pat-downs and they are instructed to be as thorough as possible, so be informed and cooperate. (or else)

We’re trying to institute the $10,000 fine that the TSA is threatening if you don’t comply, but we need Federal approval, and you know how long that could take. (Even longer in CANADA.)

(disclaimer) None of these Bank pictures are NOT of our Bank, who is creating these new policies, we just don’t have any pictures of our (brick and mortar,) Banks yet, as we’re just setting new procedures.

Company President & CEO
First City Bank of Toronto (Not a “real” Bank) so stop googleing.

Oscar Bulkimeyer CEO, , D.V.M., PhD, DDS, LLB TSA - opps sorry. Huh …

(occasionally I will be on the front lines doing the pat-downs)

We got the idea from TSA in the United States of America, thank you, we want our customers to “feel safe.”

Tongue in cheek, on my FACE.

Daniel .. Toronto, CANADA

UPDATE - November 11/2010 - The original date of this BLOG posting is documented as Monday, November 8/2010, at 10:25am and was first posted on my OPERA BLOG and then posted here this week….

NOTICE - Visitez mon BLOG opera complet en francais.

UPDATE - November 29/2010

It’s almost a month since I had Bell Fibe TV/internet installed and I must say I am very impressed by Bell Canada, and especially Ryan the techie who dropped by on Sunday and did a thorough and excellent job fixing my TV signal.

I have had some complaints and they have finally addressed them, however I am still annoyed with the sales practices of the in-lobby sales people. But with that put aside, after talking with the Bell Executive Team in Montreal (they called me) my pixillating and sound problems have been resolved. The picture quality is absolutely excellent, no pixallating (where the picture takes a burp,) or sound outs.

My next question is, will this corrective measure be addressed to “everyone” that has problems? I hope so, and suspect it is in Bell’s best interest to do so, and will people just give up and switch back after the first few weeks of pixillating picture.

On another happy note another service techie called and was able to fix the Bell anti-virus software that I was told was a “known issue and would not be resolved for a few months.” The internet side was not a problem other that the anti-virus situation since it was excellent speed since the beginning.

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Have you had PROBLEMS since you signed up for the new Bell FibeTV (Internet Protocol television-IPTV) service which allows you to get TV through the internet? One of the first things someone does when they get an internet service provider (ISP) is to load, download, a virus protection software usually provided by the ISP. If you click this link on the picture it will take you to FibeTV’s help centre, and I had great difficulty in finding out how to download the virus protection, and I’ve been using the internet for about 30 years or whenever it was introduced to the public.

At least I now know, that I am not the only one having PROBLEMS with this, I just think they launched it too soon, before they got all the bugs worked out and you can see the comments HERE at dslreports. Did they even have anyone try it, that watches TV, that might ask some tough and honest questions?

Click here to “read more” about “Bell FibeTV” “opens new window”

Daniel … Toronto, CANADA
VISIT my FULL Opera BLOG - HERE

Called today Sunday, November 7/2010 at about 7am to Bell FibeTV support and spoke with Stephane who was the first person I have talked to that had any real answers since I have made many calls to support about the service.

Problems….
They announced about 2 weeks ago ( October 25-26/2010)
that they would be having a demonstration for the new FibeTV which is coming into our building in downtown Toronto.

“To celebrate the arrival of Bell Fibe TV, we’ll be hosting a special live demonstration in your building that you won’t want to miss. Drop by to learn what Bell Fibe TV can do and for a chance to win a 32” Sony Bravia Series HD LCD TV.”

This was just the start of the “untruths, deception” that was presented by the sales people in our lobby. When I handed in the entry form there was no box, or envelope for them, they just threw them on top of the TV like it was waste paper and slips were falling off the TV and no-one seemed to care. Did someone in our building win the HD TV?

As it is stated, “for a chance to win a TV” nothing more, like well, it will go into a drum for the whole city and one person from all of Toronto will win one TV, but it appeared to everyone in our building that it was a draw for our building, deception, not lying, but not telling us the “whole truth.”

And then the lies just started rolling. On the demonstration TV they had it on HD-Net a news/sports channel and right now they are showing a show I always liked called “Prison Break” from 2005-2009. They even had episodes of it recorded and were playing it in the lobby of our building. My first question was, “oh great you have HD-Net? (channel 1756)” and both reps told me “yes” and “all” other channels are “FREE for the first month” lie, because now I find out you only get select channels free and Bell Fibe TV doesn’t even have HD-Net available for Fibe TV, although it does appear on screen on my Fibe TV guide schedule with all upcoming shows listed, including Prison Break, but when I go to the channel it says you “cannot record this channel” and I have since found out it is NOT a channel that I can receive. (only satellite)
Was that something that the sales people should have told the new subscribers, that what they were showing, to sell the service is not available? Another station that is listed in the guide and on the flyer they hand out to new subscribers is Al Jazeera English channel (516) a middle east news station.
Another lie, was they told us we could have up to six TV’s connected for the same price/package and that is NOT true. You get one box with the “pause live TV feature” (living room) and only one other box for the bedroom. But the one in the bedroom does not have the “pause live feature” nor does it have the ability to store recordings, all the recordings are stored on, the main box which is in the living room. (these things were never disclosed to us) It appears to me it is an upsell situation, where they tell you that you’re allowed six TV’s but then, you have to buy more boxes to get the results that the sales people told you could receive.
The way I found out HD Net was not available is, for two days I kept asking what “theme package” the HD-Net was located in the folder. They could not answer and made several phone calls to Bell and told me it was in the “Sports Fan” theme package, although it is not listed in the brochures they had handed out.

I accepted their answer until I found out later through my own research, that it is not available. Another problem with the theme packages is that I asked is “CourtTV” available and they said “YES” and I went on to ask what kind of programming is on that station, they said “court trial” and it is listed in Learning and News package. I thought that was great so I was sold, and signed up.

The next day I came to the lobby and again asked about the CourtTV and same answers, so I asked them to turn to CourtTV on their display model and it’s clearly called Investigation Discovery (channel 528) and there was NO court trials on this station.

It’s been changed from CourtTV for the past about the last six months to TRU-TV and Bell does not carry it, and I know more information than the sales people, and I don’t even work in the television business. Is this just the tip of the iceberg, you bet.

So now the installers come on November 5th as scheduled at 10am, one man. He is very nice and gets to work and does a great job. A couple of hours later I asked him which channel I turn to, so I can see the camera in the lobby. He tells me that’s not available. Fine. I then ask him how do I receive calls from the intercom entry system in the lobby. He says “oh that’s a problem.” Huh?

I asked him why, because nearly every building in North America has an intercom entry system and people call up to get buzzed in. He called in two other workers and they were able to get it working, three hours later. But why is this a problem, don’t all buildings have intercom systems?
And this is not even the full story, I have spent four hours this morning trying to get the virus protection set-up on my computer to no avail. Even the “internet specialists” that I talked to don’t know how to find the download page on Bell.ca, although with all these problems, I still think I MIGHT like it. But more to come, I’m just starting.

All images are © COPYRIGHT - All rights reserved - with “DMB” Watermark.

Advantages/pluses …
It is far superior to Rogers, it has more space available to save your recordings even though it is on one PVR.
It has a great guide system and search feature to find a movie or TV show.
It allows you to record four programs at once, but fail to mention an important fact. They don’t lie here they just leave out information you need to know. Yes I can record four programs at once, but only two HD channels at any one time. The other two channels must be regular non-HD channels (standard.) And the other problem is it doesn’t warn you when a upcoming recording is about to start, so you could be watching a two hour show, and then after one hour it just cuts off because the other shows are about to record on the other box.
The picture quality is much better on Bell than on Rogers even on the standard TV.
There are so many other features which are superior.

A very good explanation of what FibeTV is can be found HERE and it tells you how Bell gets the signal to your house.

Any comments, let’s hear your horror story/stories, just comment below. And who won the TV?

To look at these photos, some of my favorites, click it once, to see larger pictures click it twice.

Daniel … Toronto, CANADA
VISIT my FULL Opera BLOG - HERE

Visit my OPERA BLOG - Here - many more pics and stories, Daniel.

They haven’t played hockey there for about 10-15 years, but yes it is still standing. About five years ago Loblaw grocery chain bought the old historic building and were planning on changing it to a grocery store but never got around to it. It was just announced a few weeks ago that they finally made a decision to go ahead with their plan since they got money from the government. Over 2 million dollars and does anyone remember the capacity of the Gardens? 16,485 ?

***PLEASE NOTE ***

If anyone is seeing this page scrunched over to the left side let me know because I have noticed on some browsers it is currently pushed over and lined up to the left side rather than in the middle of the page, and not sure why. It depends on which computer I use for some unknown reason. This BLOG is best viewed using Mozilla Firefox or Opera browser which are both free and Opera is very fast.

UPDATE - May 13/2010 - Pittsburgh just lost to Montreal Canadiens last night in the Stanley Cup finals and a little trivia I just found out, was that the Canadiens were the first team to play in the Pittsburg arena about 40 years ago and now they are the last ones to play there also, since Pittsburgh is moving into a new stadium which opens sometime in August this summer, Huh, that’s interesting.

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