“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 $1.99. A rental allows a user to access a movie for 30 days after downloading it; once started, the movie will continue to be available for 24 hours,” Kapica reports.
Full article here.
Sometimes the sheer amount of stupidity on display requires no further comment.
Contact:
Another reason for Apple to launch a couple of things in Canada: Apple TV movie rentals, iTunes TV shows, 3G iPhone…
they do have itunes tv shows in canada
I give it 90 days. At that time, MDN will have the headline “More blood on iTunes’ play button.”
Aggggghhh. Excuse me but did I not hear that playsforsure rights will die in August. That Microsoft will not support who can play what after that date????
So if you buy a movie, and change computers after Aug 1 2008, you lose the movie. Even if you burn it to disk, the drm would be required to allow the movie to play.
Am I close?? I am not sure I would even give it 90 days. 🙁
en
I’d give it 6-12 months.
The bell tolls
Oh my God. The stupidity of these companies is nothing short of astounding. I mean really. Incompatible technology, soon to be even more incompatible come the end of July.
I know we’re a very small market for Apple, but I had really hoped they would be launching the move service for Apple TV before someone like these asshats did something similar and meaningless.
Asshats!
As far as being in touch with their potential customers, Bell Canada is about as much out of it as it is possible to get. Surprisingly, Rogers is only the second worst. Bell Canada actually makes a real effort to support Mac owners using their internet access. Rogers makes no effort in that area at all and is totally in bed with M$. Stragne bedfellows, the whole bunch of them!
hm!hm! …and when do they close?
Oh, Canada. Tsk, tsk.
This is actually “download-to-own-until-we-decide-to-stop-running-our-drm-servers-because-nobody-is-buying-anything”. If Microsoft, which makes a jillion times what Bell makes, in a market 10 times the size of Canada, decided to turn off it’s PlaysForSure servers, I don’t see this as being very successful for Bell or for their customers.
wow … timing really is everything.
i can’t imagine any worse association right now than labelling your product as PlaysForSure.
@hello hello
They may *technically* have iTunes TV shows in Canada but not really. They have currently no movies for rent, no movies for sale, and for TV shows they have two or three of the worst Canadian TV shows and about 25 to 30 American TV shows.
Sadly the American TV shows are just the very bottom of that particular barrel also.
All that teenage junk from MTV, blech! 🙁
What do expect Bell to do, Apple wouldn’t make a version of the iphone to work on Bell’s CDMA network, but thats ok for you fanboys. If you crap on Bell, crap on Apple first!
Good luck…
Are they publicly traded?
Short target.
Its bell that is in bed with Microsoft, as they have hooked up their sympatico mail with hotmail, while Rogers uses Yahoo (altho with all the merger talks… who knows.)
Rogers has detailed information on how to configure a mac with their internet (and since Rogers does not use PPPoE, its much easier), and Apple Mail client with their servers.
Having said that, Roger’s sux, altho not as hard as Bell.
Ah, gosh, and who handles all of Bell’s Sympatico email – Monkey Boy’s glorious Hotmail! Who’s really running the shop?
From what I am reading it is only MSNs Plays For Sure servers that are being shut down so the Bell ones might last a year or so. In any case this is a bad move, but show that there is nothing legally (CRTC) holding Apple back from selling Movies on iTunes Canada, so it is the Studio’s that are the holdup.
http://www.techvideonews.com/view_news_link.php?nlid=93163&p=1
I hear they’re also doing movie rentals in BetaMax.
Way to pick a winning format fellas!
Oh – oh, the rapture! I can feel it – you can feel it too if you want
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“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.”
I love it. They actually admit in the article that PlaysForSure devices are not popular. What great unintentional PR for the iPod.
Yes, they are publicly traded. They have been dropping like a stone for the last few weeks (for other reasons.)
Definitely a short target.
What’s truly pathetic is that The Globe and Mail (usually an excellent newspaper) is part of the same company (Bell Globemedia)…so this “article” is pure propaganda/advertising. If you want a real guffaw, this is from Bell’s help screen:
Can I use Bell Video Store on my Mac?
First off, several of us have Macs at home and this is just as frustrating for us.
We’re hoping that one day Microsoft, Apple, the content owners and video sites like ours will have a big group hug and we can all share content. Until that day comes, all video content is delivered to you wrapped with Digital Rights Management (DRM).
DRM is what sets the rules on how and where we can watch videos. Bell Video Store is required by the content owners to put DRM on every video.
We are using a Windows Media DRM, which Mac does not support. Mac works with their own DRM, called Fairplay, which as you may have read only works with iTunes.
So we are left with the option of not being able to deliver our service to Mac users.
Please share any ideas on how we can get MAC and PC to play nice together. Until then, feel free to browse our site with your Mac, but please remember you’ll be unable to play any of the content we currently have on the site at this time.
A copy of the letter I sent to Richard Currie:
To whom it may concern:
Regarding your Plays-For-Sure downloads, what are you thinking in presenting movies in a format that is unpopular, being abandoned by the company that created it, restrictive, and plays only on the vast minority of portable video devices? I’m amazed that so-called “businessmen” made this decision. The world has changed and the content providers no longer have the power they used to: piracy will always be an option, especially when restrictive DRM is used to “protect” music or movies. The power now resides with the public, and the most logical plan would be to appeal to the people who are willing to pay for content: present content of good quality at a reasonable price. The only company who has presented this alternative is Apple. Much as the movie and music studios have objected, Apple presents the only logical, viable model to selling music online (movie downloads are still in their infancy, but my guess is that the same logic applies to movie downloads).
Microsoft has a long history of strong-arming and abandoning its “partners,” so don’t expect them to do you any favors when this plan fails within the next year or two. Using “Plays for Sure,” an oxymoron which Microsoft has publicly stated it is abandoning due to its extreme unpopularity, is either a very poor business decision, or some sort of business sarcasm.
I live in America, so I won’t be subjected to any of your nonsense, but I had to write to let you know how foolish your plan is.
Sincerely,