I'm looking into ditching cable and switching to Bell ExpressView HD, so I'm looking for real people's impressions. To customers and former customers:

What is your level of satisfaction? How much system downtime is there in any given time frame? How harsh does the weather have to be to lose your signal? Are there any other comments you might have about the service?

I have Expressview with the highest level package, (PVR, multiple channel packages, all the HD channels etc.) and I love it, its so much better than Cogecos digital cable which is what I had before. The PVR works wonderfully, there is quite a selection of HD channels, I think I have like 60 or something.

The downtime during bad weather can last for a couple of hours depending how bad the weather is, but it doesn't bother me because I either play my PS3 or watch something I've recorded to the PVR. The weather has to be pretty bad to put it out, very heavy rain or heavy snow, I think mine has gone out on about 20 occasions over this year.

I'd definitely get it if I were you, I'll never go back to cable.

Thanks for your impressions. So basically, it almost takes weather that might bring down the power grid anyways in order to lose the signal?

Pretty much. It's raining right now where I am and I still have a strong signal.

My parents had Bell ExpressView service a few years back. They canceled their service when problems occurred with the dish and Bell refused to come out and service it. Apparently, Bell decided one day to stop servicing the area that the live in.

Interesting, though maybe they are being more customer-friendlier lately. (Maybe to dissuade people from switching to newer options or as part of their pre-privatization plans.)

For instance, last week I had a problem with my internet and they sent a technician the same day to check our lines inside and out. (I ended up having to rewire my house). Also, last night I phoned to inquire about turning my land-line into a dry loop so I can get Vonage for a home phone with my Bell Internet service by the time I had hung up, my monthly bill for phone had dropped from 94$/month to 40$ a month (we were greatly over paying and now it is inline with Vonage's rates) and for 2 $ more a month, I'll now be getting 1MB upstream (great for hosting my Warhawk league games) and my bandwidth limit had doubled to 60GB/month.

My mom had it because the people that owned the house had it, it seemed like a huge waste. You get like 5 channels of the same thing and not much added content. Maybe they just had a shitty package, but it was more annoying then anything.