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To all of you who still don't understand what UBB is all about. Bell's on demand service charges $6.99 PER MOVIE, NetFlix is $7.99 UNLIMITED PER MONTH. That is all. Older movies on Bell still run at $4.99 per.
Now available to Canadians:
* Boxee
* AppleTV
* NetFlix
* NHL Gamecenter Live (all other major sports leagues provide similar services)
* Google TV (coming soon...)
* iTunes
* PS3 store
* Xbox store
All of these will impact your bandwidth. By Bell imposing ridiculously low caps and further charging per GB, you will not be able to afford these services (meanwhile Bell's on demand and Internet TV services will magically not count against your cap). This is an obvious financial disincentive to prevent you from accessing these services. If everything were on equal footing, then the cheapest service would win out, wouldn't it?
Great comment by Graysdir to those hating on Netflix (yes, we all realize that Netflix is in its infancy and that the selection sucks):
Netflix has been adding new titles weekly.
But with UBB in place, Netflix will never have a chance to grow. Therein lies the problem. With 25-60GB caps with our ISPs, Netflix won't have enough subscribers to be able to afford to buy new content. Exactly what Shaw is hoping for.
I've heard rumors that Hulu was considering coming to Canada, but now that UBB is in place, they are reconsidering, because with these caps, it makes web video unavailable to the average Canadian internet user.
Seriously, how do you expect there to be any form of competition if Canadians won't have the bandwidth available to access these services? From a business sense, these services will just overlook Canada. It's not just about today, it's also about tomorrow.
Not available to Canadians, but may one day be:
* Amazon On Demand
* Hulu
* Roku
The reason many of us Canadians don't even know about these products is because we have not yet been exposed to them. The second you actually see the type of content that our American counterparts have access to, a lightbulb goes off and you begin to question, "why don't I have access to these services?" It's a beautiful tragedy thanks to the likes of the CRTC and Bell.
The sad part is that they are killing more than just our access to Internet TV by attempting to limit our Internet in the ways that they have/are.
Case in point:
You know what else? Skype, streaming radio, Facetime will be impacted as well. Open Source, cloud computing, steam, console/pc video games and even app stores (ever use your wifi to avoid the high price cell data use?). and just forget filling your house with smart appliances. UBB is going to put us behind the rest of the world in content delivery of all kinds.
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