Youtube Rents Films To Canadians
Youtube is renting films to Canadians now, for $3.99 or $4.99. Some free films are also available. Click here to access their selection.
CinemaNow Opens Canadian Site
CinemaNow had opened a Canadian site, enabling Canadians who use Windows or internet connected devices to rent or purchase films online.
Film rentals are generally $4.99 and purchases vary in price.
Walmart’s Online Movie Rental Service
Walmart has decided to offer online movie rentals in the states, via the Vudu service they had purchased in March 2010.
There is no news in regards to a Canadian service yet.
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.
Online Retailer Adapts To Usage Based Billing
Netflix Canada has decided to offer additional options to their customers in response to the usage based billing issues.
Canadian subcribers will now be able to access additional options when it comes to the quality of the videos they stream from Netflix in order to reduce their consumption of bandwidth.
According to Netflix, they will now offer three levels of video quality to their Canadian customers :
- Good – Max. 625 kbps Video/64 kbps Audio, which translates to about 9 gigabites of data for 30 hours of content.
- Better – Max. 1300 kbps Video/192 kpbs Audio, which translates to about 20 gigabites of data for 30 hours of content.
- Best – Max. 4800 kbps (1080p HD video) and 384 kbps (5.1 audio), which translates to about 67 gigabites of data for 30 hours of HD content.
On the Best setting transfers will fluctuate depending on if the content is in HD and/or whether there is congestion. This means 30 hours of non-HD content on the Best setting will translate to about 31 gigabites of data.
It should be noted that American and Canadian television episodes from before 2009 are not likely going to be available in HD, so people who enjoy watching this content can use the Best setting. And several films on Netflix are not available in HD as well, including many by Paramount, who have just signed onto the service in Canada.
Warner Film Rentals On Facebook
It appears that the Warner film rentals on Facebook are not yet available to Canadians.
I’ve checked the The Dark Knight
I suspect that Canadian will not be able to rent from Facebook for some time, which is a shame really because the $3 fee is pretty decent, though I already own The Dark Knight