I'm surprised there aren't threads on this yet... not sure if this belongs in IPTV Forum, or LCD Flat Panel Forum, or even OTA Antenna forums..I'll explain why...

I'm moving towards a mainly non-monthly charge (i.e. no re-occuring expenses) tv-setup. Using...
(1) OTA Digital Television (HD)
(2) FTA Sateliates (legal kind) for Galaxy 18 & AMC 4 (which has Biography Channel, History channel, etc)
(3) Possibly Yahoo TV Widgets (new Sony or Samsung LCD tvs)

1 & 2 give me my regular TV Channels (ABC, FOX, CBS, CBC, NBC, etc..) I'm lucky that I live in a part of Canada (Milton, Ontario) where I can point a high quality antenna (CM4221) and get like 18 HD channels for free. Plus get some great free speciality channels like Biography channel, history channel, etc from legal FTA.

But....I'm missing things like TMN, HBO, etc...Right now with 1 & 2 I pay $0.00 per month...all free & legal.. But I want some TMN/HBO/Showtime "like" type abilities... I already have high speed internet..So was thinking if I buy one of those new TVs that have BlockBuster OnDemand, CinemaNow, Netflix, Showtime, etc... All with DVD quality video.. using the new "internet tv widgets". Sure I'd have to pay for a movie. But I'd rather go with OTA Antenna/FTA Sat and "occasionally" getting an instant Showtime premium tv show or movie or BlockBuster/Netflix movie almost instantly then go with Shaw/Cogeco/ExpressVu/etc...I'd still be saving a ton of money each month.

Long intro I know...

My question is anyone here actually using the new Sony or Samsung TV widgets in Canada yet? For the premium dvd-quality movie stuff?? I can't find anyone talking about it anywhere in the forums. Not much real reviews on actually people using it in real life. Just mainly press-releases.

Also does it actually *WORK* in Canada? The BlockBuster OnDemand TV widget says right on the website "This product will not work outside United States", not sure if they're banning use outside of USA by looking at your IP address, or by looking at you not having a VISA/credit-card with an american address attached. The CinemaNow website doesn't seem to mention which countries it works on. Haven't done a lot of searching on Showtime yet.

Anyone here using these TV widgets on your new tvs to watch movies streamed over the internet? Is it really dvd-quality? Really on-demand/fast? I don't want to click and then wait 5 minutes for my movie.. I want to be able to just turn the TV and grab a movie or watch a TV Show. The press releases/media-hype seem to say it's just that easy. But where are the real people who are actually using/doing this in Canada? No one's posting anything? I tried to do searches on yahoo widgets, tv widgets, etc. Just found the press-release stuff mostly.

I think I may have found one answer to my questions....

Just about all the premium TV Widget services (NetFlix, CinemaNow, Showtime, BlockBuster On Demand) aren't actually available yet. Reading the press releases, websites, etc seem to say that they're all there and working. But digging deeper (found a Cnet article from April 2009) looks like they're mostly not-out-yet and expected sometime in 2009....

Still don't know about which/what will actually be available in Canada though, and if not available in canada how exactly they're restricting/stopping people. Or what the real world quality/speed will be like. The CNet article said some discouraging stuff about responce time which I didn't like

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10217972-1.html

I imagine they will use IP-based geolocation to determine if you are connecting to their service from the USA or not. Same thing they use to block non-americans from connecting to streaming TV on all the big broadcasters sites.

You can go through an american proxy to solve this issue, however this usually decreases your connection speed significantly.

If you can I would wait a bit longer untill the TV widget technology has been proven, I'm sure by the time all the rental widget services actually become online, there will be tv's out with better software and faster processing capabilities.

Interesting setup you're proposing, keep us posted as to how things turn out!

BTW you could try out HULU through a US proxy, might give ya a good idea as to how HD streaming might work out for ya

There are some pretty scathing reviews on the TV widgets that I read back a few months ago (I think on Engadget.com). While a great idea, apparently when put into practice, the widgets can take a very long time to load and you end up with these boxes saying "loading" all over your tv while they load.

Personally I love the idea, and it would be cool if this type of thing starts to make it on to our TV sets, but it better be quick, seamless, and functional.