Our Fantastic, Reliable Postal Service

Spoiler alert—That title is just sarcasm. I'm actually quite ticked off with Canada Post and their lousy service lately. And so begins our tale...

A couple months ago, I had redeemed some Airmiles for an iTunes card in preparation for purchasing fall TV shows. It finally arrived, a month after I made my request. But to be fair, I have no idea when my order was actually shipped, just that previous redemptions usually showed up in a couple weeks. For all I know, it may have been finally shipped only a couple days earlier and it was delivered really fast.

Next up came an online Best Buy order. It showed up two full weeks after being shipped. That's twice as long as it should have. It only should have taken two weeks if it had been shipped from a small town in Newfoundland.

Then came an Amazon order. I have all my Amazon orders shipped to my work, as they frequently use UPS. That way, someone will always be available to sign for the package, and in the event that Canada Post was used for that order it'll just end up in our mailbox instead. Since I always just use their “Free Super-Saver Shipping” option I have no way to predict what shipping method they'll use. This order was shipped using Canada Post. When tracking it one day, it showed that it was forwarded, and delivered, to our office's alternate PO box downtown rather than the one down the street. Not something that should have happened, but it wasn't that big a deal. Until I went to the post office after work and found the parcel was not actually there.

The next morning, however, tracking it again had a new line saying a card had just been put in the box for me to get the parcel from the counter. I went back again that afternoon, and found that contrary to what the tracking notes said, there was no card and the parcel itself was actually in the mailbox. But at least I got my parcel, and didn't have to wait in the long lineup for the counter. I still had to make two trips to the post office though, since they previously said it was delivered but it wasn't. Actually, I wouldn't have even needed to make the second trip if they didn't say it was carded. I only went because they usually ask for ID when picking up parcels at the counter and as such one of my co-workers likely wouldn't have been able to get it.

A week or so later my next order was shipped from Amazon, something I had preordered a couple months prior. About the time it would be delivered, I tracked it and noticed it was out for delivery. A few hours later I tracked it again to confirm delivery, and was shocked to see the line, “Recipient not located at address provided. Item being returned to sender.” I have no idea how the Canada Post employee in question went about determining that I apparently no longer worked there. The timeframe between the two notes was too short for it to have been delivered to the wrong person and for them have taken it back to the post office. I doubt any of my coworkers placed a note in our box saying, “Mike doesn't work here anymore.” At least once the parcel gets received by Amazon they'll give a full refund on it. But not until they get it back, and Canada Post is taking their time getting it back to them.

Then came the big one. My Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray set that I preordered eight months ago, the very moment I learned that the Star Wars Blu-rays were available for preorder. I was hopeful that it would be shipped using UPS, as my Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Blu-ray set, which is about the same physical size, came via UPS. When I got my shipping confirmation email last Friday, I immediately scrolled down to the part in the email where they say how it was shipped. I saw it said Canada Post, and the first thought that came to my mind was, “Oh crap, I hope I actually get it.” But, I was also thinking that Canada Post's service couldn't be that poor that they'd make the same mistake twice.

I was wrong. When tracking it this morning, I saw the same notification that it, too, was being returned to Amazon. The weird thing is the time stamps. At 5:59 AM it said “Out for delivery” and at 6:00 AM, “Recipient not located at this address.” Obviously, they didn't even attempt delivery. And last weekend, when the set was released, retail stores were selling it for the same price I was getting from Amazon, so the thought did cross my mind that maybe I should buy a second copy just in case, and if/when I get my order in the mail I can just return this one. Too bad I didn't, since everyone's prices have gone back up.

Maybe it's just bad luck that I had two parcels in a row that never got to me. But I do see how frequently it happens at work where I ship something to someone and it gets returned with a sticker stating that the recipient had moved, but we did have the correct address and were able to confirm with them that they still do indeed live there. The really sad thing about this is that it'll hurt online retailers like Amazon more than Canada Post. I'll be less likely to order things online now, because I'll be worried that my parcel will be shipped using Canada Post and I'll end up not even receiving it. If it weren't for the fact that nobody else can come close to matching Canada Post's prices, I'd be seriously looking into switching from them for the parcels I ship at work now.

But I guess I should look on the bright side. At least these parcels were all just for movies and TV shows, not important medication or other things vital to my survival.

HD or Not HD?

One of my favourite TV shows, Castle, began its fourth season yesterday and today it appeared in iTunes to purchase a Season Pass. My big dilemma has been whether I should buy the Standard Definition version like the last three seasons, or buy it in High Definition this year. I now have a larger TV, so I'm sure it'll look great in HD. Also, this season it's only $12 more for HD. I don't know if the lower prices this year (last year was $45 for an SD Season Pass, and only $28 this year) are because they simply want to drum up sales, or because it's planned to be a shorter season. Hopefully, the former. It's a great show.

But there's a lot of debate out there over whether or not iTunes' HD videos should technically even be called HD. Or to quote Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” With a full 1080p HD video, you get six to seven times the number of pixels compared to 480p SD video¹. In contrast, the 720p videos you'll find in the iTunes store and many other online video services only have 2-3x pixels². That's a considerable difference. Granted, any 720p videos I've seen (such as Netflix' HD streams) still look nice, but if I'm shelling out an extra dollar or so per episode for HD video, I'd rather get full HD.

Also, even with 1080p there's still a big difference between what you might find online and what you'd get by buying a Blu-ray Disc instead. A BD has a considerable amount of space on it for storing extra data, so in addition to the high resolution the picture has an increased bit rate (meaning even more detail in the picture) plus higher quality sound. When my brother bought a BD player to replace his dead DVD player—and he doesn't have an HD TV yet so he couldn't compare image quality—his first comment was how much better the audio quality was when comparing the BD and DVD of the same movie. Someone who's downloading a video isn't going to want to wait hours (or even days) to watch it, so audio and video quality has to be sacrificed to make for a more manageable download. But since modern encoding methods can get an SD video to an acceptable file size without significantly compromising quality compared to the DVD, choosing an SD video file over the DVD doesn't have the same loss in quality compared to HD files versus Blu-ray Discs. If you want HD video, you're far better off getting a Blu-ray.

Fortunately for me, I'm used to watching SD TV shows. True, the picture isn't as sharp and detailed as with my Blu-ray movies, but I don't seem to notice as much when it's a TV show and not a movie. I'm slowly upgrading my movie collection to Blu-ray when I find good sales on them (I'm hesitant to pay more than $5-10 to re-buy a movie, unless it's one I really like and have gotten my money's worth out of the DVD already), but I'm perfectly happy having DVD-quality TV shows. Well, part of that is because I like ripping my TV shows into my computer to watch via my Apple TV, which I couldn't do with a Blu-ray because I don't have a BD reader for my Mac.

But back to Castle. Since all my TV shows (aside from some newer Anime purchases) are in SD, and as I said I haven't had any complaints with the image quality even on my new TV, I think it's safe to save the $12 and stick with the SD Season Pass. Maybe I can use part of what I'd save to instead buy Barbie: Princess Charm School! Uh, yeah, no thanks...

¹1080p video has a resolution of 1920x1280, or 2,073,600 pixels. 480p video is either 640x480 (307,200 pixels) or 720x480 (345,600 pixels). Technically, widescreen 480p video is displayed at 854x480 resolution, but it's only stored at one of the other two resolutions and is stretched horizontally when displayed.
²720p video has a resolution of 1280x720 (921,600 pixels).

What an Omazing Singer!

Make sure to listen to the whole thing, or if you can't stomach it at least jump to 2 minutes in!