Bell Canada is running a new service to Toronto – Bell Entertainment Service is a new service that allows for 20MBit/s Internet access and IP-based television services (IPTV). It’s an interesting service and right now they have a promotion for 50% the fee for the first year.

Features unique to this service is the smart PVR, which allows you to set recordings from any web browser or mobile phone; 20Mbit internet access (upload speed is not rated), watching PVR’d content on any tv at home, and wireless Internet service included.

There’s very little, if any, technical information on the service but on a Ben Lucier’s Blog there’s more information. He also links to the Bell User Guide. What’s important to note that this is NOT Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). The last mile is actually just a fast implementation of DSL. Another thing to note is that DSL link is shared between your intenet service and television service. You can get download speeds of 20MBit using internet alone, but each channel you watch will knock off about 3Mbit off your download speeds. Not a big deal, but you should be aware of it. There is a 60GB monthly download limit on the internet portion of the service, which is small compared to the limits on Roger’s offerings. Hopefully they will increase it to be in-line with their competitors.

The biggest question I have is the picture quality of the HD channels – are they as good as non-compressed signals found on ExpressVu? Rogers has been compressing the HD channels of it’s service in recent years and picture quality is down quite a bit. I’m itching for a reason to switch and this IPTV service might be it.