rental

Rogers Video Ends Renting Services

Rogers Video stores across Canada will no longer rent DVDs or Blu-ray discs tomorrow.

Starting this week this chain will offload their film stock at reduced prices leaving Canadian consumers with very limited options in regards to renting films.

Cable and satellite subscribers will continue being able to rent films on their digital boxes and Canadians with access to high speed connections have access to online film rental services like Cineplex, Cinemanow, iTunes, Netflix and Youtube. But it appears the mail services and kiosks are now the only viable options for people who do not have access to cable, satellite and high speed internet services.

Unfortunately the kiosk services offered by Zip and Best Buy are limited to major cities at the moment, though they will probably expand in response to the demand. And the cable, satellite and high speed internet options remain expensive.

The current rental fee for recent high definition releases on my digital cable service is $7.99. And if I were to rent these films online in 720p I would use an average of about 4 gigabytes worth of usage per film towards my usage limit.

I am hoping that the digital cable rental fee will be reduced in response to public demand. But at the moment I am also testing out The Movie Network and Moviepix as a cheaper alternative, though releases on The Movie Network still appear to be subjected to a considerable delay.

As it stands I appear to prefer Moviepix for the channel’s selection of classic films and will likely subscribe to this service until Bell’s Fibe TV service is introduced to my neighbourhood.

I will probably dabble in online film rentals, within strict limitations, and use Zip.ca‘s services as my main source for newer releases.

As previously reported on this blog, Zip will be expanding their kiosks. And I believe theater companies like Cineplex, Empire and AMC will eventually offer kiosk services in their locations in respond to the demand left by Roger Video‘s departure.

I am also hoping for a national expansion of the Best Buy branded kiosks to Best Buy and Mac’s locations through-out Canada.

Rogers Video To Close 40% of Stores

Rogers Video will be closing 63 of their 156 Canadian stores by the end of January, according to the Toronto Star.

The company had reported a 46% reduction in revenue in October, having obtained $60 million in profits in the first three quarters of 2011 instead of $111 million in 2011. (Q3 2011).

Rogers had closed 20 video stores in 2010 and is currently revamping their stores in response to the market, to concentrate on smartphone and tablet sales. They had also closed their direct mail rental service, Rogers Video Direct, this month.

Zip To Expand Movie Rental Kiosks

Online movie rental retailer Zip.ca will partner with Metro Inc. to bring their movie rental kiosks to over 800 Metro grocery stores though-out Canada.

These red kiosks, which rented DVDs for $1 and blu-ray disc for $2, were successfully tested in Ottawa and Montreal Metro stores. And the company is hoping to gain more customers from Blockbuster Canada‘s extensive membership.

Zip is also currently offering internet movie rentals on Samsung brand devices.

Shaw Discusses Video Service

It appears that Shaw customer will not be able to rent films online from this company’s Movie Club service without it counting against their monthly allotment of data unless they rent this content via their set top box.

The video on demand service, which is currently available in Standard Definition, costs $12 per month and a high definition service will be made available shortly, for $5 more per month according to this press release.

Netflix users have been complaining that the cable companies are imposing limitations on this popular service, giving their own movie rental services a competitive advantage by removing or reducing their own service’s impact to their customer’s allocated monthly transfers.