“With more than 1,500 movies and TV titles available, the Bell Video Store is [Canada’s] first online service to offer download-to-own movies the same day they become available in retail stores. People in less of a hurry can download them to rent shortly after, when they are released for rent,” Jack Kapica reports or The Globe and Mail Update.
“In announcing the opening, Bell cited recent movies such as Cloverfield, Into the Wild, and There Will Be Blood as available. The store also offers access to classic TV shows, Bollywood movies and children’s entertainment including Franklin, Rolie Polie Olie and Little Bear,” Kapica reports.
“To watch the shows, customers must install the Bell Video Store media player on a PC or laptop, and can start watching a few moments after purchasing a video without having to wait for the entire file to download. Owners of a Media Centre PC will be able to use their remote to control their viewing,” Kapica reports.
“The content is protected by desktop applications that support Windows Media digital rights management, which does not exist for computers running Macintosh OS or Linux operating systems. Only those devices that support the Microsoft PlaysForSure format can be used for portable players. The system cannot be transferred to popular devices such as the Apple iPod,” Kapica reports.
“Customers can purchase shows for prices starting at $4.99, and rent them for prices starting at $1.99. A rental allows a user to access a movie for 30 days after downloading it; once started, the movie will continue to be available for 24 hours,” Kapica reports.
Full article here.
Sometimes the sheer amount of stupidity on display requires no further comment.
Contact:
Great News. This means that the studios are finally ready to offer their content to Canadians. It won’t be too much longer until iTunes Canada has the same content.
Bell is just another crappy company providing crappy service. I wonder what Bell well charge solicitors for your personal information and viewing habits. Soon the evening phone calls will start coming – “we noticed you watched National Lampoon’s Vacation last night – could we interest you in one of our Carnival boat cruises?” I will take a pass on this just like I do with their other services. My home is proudly Bell free.
Let the Globe and Mail (Toronto’s National Newspaper – which covers local toronto car accidents) help spread the word for their sister company.
As a side note – Sprint should buy Bell Canada – then they would have more stupid managers on duty.
Bell likes monopolies or very dominant oligopolies. They are used to it.
Hopefully Apple announces support/availability on June 9th for Apple TV Rentals here.
The bottom line – CRTC in Canada is wasted breath. Our telcos suck. Our cable companies suck. Company first. Customer last.Sounds like a motto from Microsoft. as MDN likes to say about Billy and Ballmer..
Your frustration. Our Fault.
Absolutely no surprise that Bell doesn’t like the flexibility offered by Apple and the ability to bypass the carrier to put products on the phone. You can see all the cable companies and satellite providers working hard to make sure Apple doesn’t provide movies better than they do.
Watch for Bell movie downloads to not be included in your monthly download limits or download throttling. Bell just announced throttling on their internet providers. You can bet the Apple website will be throttled by Bell.
I recommend Jail sentences for the executive. Better yet, public hanging. Probably wouldn’t be covered by Bell Globe Media.
Cynical…no…just the reality of the lack of government oversite in the Canadian marketplace.
TO Bell Corp,
Bell,
I was astounded at how hard your corporation worked to leave Apple products out of the devices available in Bell movie offerings.
Microsoft products are unreliable, consistently at odds with consumer preferences, and more importantly, full of viruses.
Your choice to stay away from the most popular portable players and the most accessible home devices astounds me.
It does confirm that you must have been paid by Microsoft to use their broken technology as a real management team would never accept such an inferior DRM as Microsoft never plays for sure technology.
PS. For entertainment rather than frustration, you may wish to play this recent commercial…
http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/
I recommend “Sad Song Long”.
This note was written on a MAC. I wish you one full day of work without using control -alt-delete.
I wonder if Thurrott or Enderlenut will approve of this message.
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“Only those devices that support the Microsoft PlaysForSure format can be used for portable players.”
lol Bell you f*ktards. Frank and Gordon you dumb beavers!! I’m am so happy that are continuing down the path of MS sheep followers and their are continue to dig your own grave. Ever the sweeter as I change land line providers this morning off of ma Bell! see you suckerzzzzz!! Finally totally off Bell!!
You should see the Windows shit they use in the newsroom.
Canada is a backward place, full of wankers in suits who think they are still living in the 1950’s.
The CRTC is a criminal organistaion, the RCMP is in cahoots with organised crime (FACT), the judiciary can be bought, etc. etc
Canada is owned by the USA, but pretends it isnt.
Fuck Bell, fuck the canadian mainstream.
There are still some of us in Canada who arent assholes, but its a small number…..
One Word: TITANIC
what else can they do? are there any drm-systems on the market for video besides fairplay and plays-for-sure? does apple license fairplay? i don’t think so. so what could they do? does anybody know which drm- system is used by vudu?
I sent the following email to the provided link.
“It is puzzling to me that, in the face of the reality of digital media that Bell would offer a service to customers that excludes the only portable media player that matters: Apple’s iPod. The iPod is over 75% of the portable media player market, which means that a huge majority of those owners are using their iPods on a Microsoft Windows PC. If you choose to pursue a business plan that prevents users from transferring their content to their portable media player of choice, it is a simple matter of economics that your store will be a dismal failure. As well, it is painfully obvious from the latest Play For Sure fiascos regarding expiring media licensing servers that partnership with Microsoft technologies is beneficial neither to consumers nor business partners, given that Microsoft will abandon said partners when it suits their aims.
Digital Rights Management in the vein of Microsoft’s Play For Sure is too restrictive to be of value, and DRM of most stripes is merely an irritant to consumers.
Thank you.”
Magic Word = ‘think’, as in “I think very soon Bell will be turning out the lights on a painful and expensive experiment.”
Exactly where does Bell Canada go to get universal DRM software that works on Mac OSX, Linux and the various Windows Oses?
If Apple really wanted to sell movies to Canadian iTunes users they could set up a Bell store within a store in iTunes Store Canada in a matter of days.
After all, it’s all about the hardware sales, isn’t it?
This is good news! I like to read stories like this, don’t you?
A lot of Windows sufferers are going to get royally hosed when Bell announces all customers must upgrade to Vista if they are to regain access to their media or to resume regular programming.
It’s stories like this that chip away at the pedestal Microsoft has built for themselves.
Apple should be ready with a marketing campaign to air in that market.
Well, what can you do? Would Apple allow Bell to use their iTunes in Canada? I doubt it. What is a company that wants to move into a new technology delivery system of movies and TV shows going to do to accomplish this, outside of making their own technology up from scratch.
I suppose that they could have bought in and partnered up with Apple, or NetFlix, or who ever. But, there would always be someone angry about the choice. Just as we don’t want a company to blindly surrender to a Microsoft, what is the best way for a start up project to do?
“Exactly where does Bell Canada go to get universal DRM software…”
The same place everyone else goes for a universal platform-agnostic DRM solution: a Standards body, like ISO or whatever but they have nothing on the shelf yet.
The only solution is a computer platform choice!
Here is the short list of middlemen (suckers) who took the bait in the PlaysForSure licensing (Bell should find out why they’re no longer in business) agreement:
AOL MusicNow (closed)
Yahoo Music (closed)
MTV URGE (closed)
MSN Music (closed)
Musicmatch Jukebox (closed)
Wal-Mart Music Downloads (switched to MP3)
Here is the list of hardware vendors who agreed to build portable devices under Microsoft’s PlaysForSure licensing agreement, which by the way, prohibited them from supporting (since amended) any non-Microsoft audio encoding formats:
Archos
Cingular
Cowon
Creative Labs
Denon
Digitrex
D-Link
Ericsson
Insignia
iriver
Kyocera
Motorola
Nokia
Palm
Pioneer
Philips
Roku
RCA
Samsung
SanDisk
Sonos
Sony
Toshiba
Come August 31, 2008, if you own any PlaysForSure media you had better decide what you’re ultimately going to do with it because MSN Entertainment and Video Services division is going to pull the plug on their MSN Music license servers.
On September first, your music will be locked in to whatever computer you chose and as long as you keep the computer and never upgrade the OS you will always have your music. Or course you can always burn and rip it back into a computer minus the DRM. It’s a second-gen copy and in some cases an enormous amount of work but it sure beats the alternative. Paying for the music again.
Bell Mentalité !
BTW : thanks for that very interesting comment G4Dualie.
Vivement le 9 juin. When july, 9 will come, I’ll migrate from Bell to Rogers with a brand new iPhone and bye-bye bad 3rd party sync and media monopole. I know, Rogers sucks but Bell are vultures.
Bell folks were recently handing out free popcorn (unpopped) and a card for video rentals at subway stations in Toronto… I had presumed it was to pickup a dvd in their service centres….
oh well, the popcorn should be ok
every month or so Bell sends me a letter announcing Bell internet! so far I have not considered the offer.