Rogers expected to launch On-Demand Online next week
Next Monday in the Silver Screening Room at the Hazelton Hotel in Yorkville, Rogers Communication is expected to unveil its new Rogers On-Demand Online service.
Details of the new service are sketchy at this point but from what Digital Home has been able to learn, the new service will offer Rogers customers the ability to watch Video On Demand programming on their home computer.
The Video on-demand service is expected to launch with fifteen network partners including content from Citytv, Rogers Sportsnet, A&E, Bio and G4 Canada.
The mid-month launch was first announced by Rogers senior vice president David Purdy at an industry conference last month in New York City.
To be eligible to watch the programming, Rogers customers will have to subscribe to both Rogers Cable and Rogers High Speed Internet service.
Unlike Bell TV, whose recent online on-demand offerings will be available to Bell TV subscribers anywhere in Canada , it appears Rogers On-demand online offerings will only be available to subscriber inside the home where the Rogers high speed cable modem is located. This is because Rogers will use the subscriber’s cable modem to authenticate whether they are eligible to receive the programs whereas Bell TV uses the customers Bell Log on ID so online content can be streamed a Bell TV customer’s desktop or laptop computer anywhere in Canada, provided a high-speed connection is available.
Digital Home also expects that, in addition to the new On-Demand Online announcement, Rogers may also introduce its new Interactive Program Guide (IPG) called QuickStart at the event. The company recently began training customer service staff on QuickStart so expect it to be spun out to consumers in coming weeks.
The new IPG provides more options and features than the existing guide including the ability to display what’s on six different channels at once divided by genre.
The following screenshots show the new Quickstart IPG.
Rogers Quickstart Main Menu
Rogers QuickStart What's On Menu
Rogers QuickStart Menu - Fun and Games
Rogers QuickStart Menu - Daily Essentials
Discuss all Rogers offerings in our Rogers Digital Cable forum.
How will this effect Canadians using a proxy masker to gain access to Hulu and ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox dot-com? I’m sorry, but I find Canadian network’s “vision” of online streaming to be less than adequate at best.
This is just another propaganda for Rogers. When I heard of the new on line service of on demand on Global TV it said if you have rogers cable or internet you could receive it. This is a bald faced lie. I have both and can not access it. The only way you can access it is if you have digital service or change your service to upgrade and subscribe to digital or HD. Now if you had digital service and already get it free why in gods name would you want to have on your computer too. Not only that but first it will be a 12th (or worse) of the quality you will get through your TV and second if you choose the higher of the two qualities offered, 2 hours of viewing will eat up 1GB of service on your monthly contract. I have portable internet with 20 GB per month so this if I could use it would only give me 40 hours of monthly TV programing on line providing I only use it for TV. The thing is that almost all the programs they are offering can be found on the individual TV channel site for free and most without the required commercials they are now saying they must insert in the On Demand version. I think I’ll stick to the old technology of three VCR’s and one TV with analogue cable. At least I can fast forward through the ever expanding number of commercials. Soon an hour of programing will be 20 minutes of TV programing and 40 minutes of commercials and I will for one be happy that I kept the old system.
Maxie