Netflix touches down in Canada this fall

http://business.financialpost.com/2010/07/19/fp-tech-desk-netflix-touches-down-in-canada-this-fall/

by rpledge • 16 years ago

25 18 16 years ago

business.financialpost.com

It is interesting that this is streaming-only.

rpledge• 16 years ago

I'm sure streaming is more profitable for them than dealing with physical discs. I'm stoked, if the selection is as good as I hear it is in the US I'll be dropping a lot of my cable channels.

dmix• 16 years ago

I'll be dropping my megavideo subscription

mattmillr• 16 years ago

One day in the not-too-distant future, we'll see a headline here "Netflix stops mailing discs to US customers, goes streaming-only." It's (mostly? ideally?) all about the most efficient and user-accepted way to move the bits around.

pragmatic2• 16 years ago

Maybe some Canadians can chime in on the Canadian Post. When I was a credit analyst that dealt with Canada, many people would not get their mail every day or have a reliable way to send it back. Many would take their bill payments into a bank or store or whatever and pay them.

This may be the reason streaming only works much better. In fact that's the first thought I had, "I wonder how they are going to deal with the Canadian mail system."

This seemed to vary by province/region. I remember some towns way out east having only a few phones (in the local store). And I remember thinking, "wow, and we think the Midwest is isoloated."

ojbyrne• 16 years ago

Canadian mail is slower than US mail, plus there's no deliveries on Saturday, so Netflix wouldn't be quite as good a value. Zip.ca, a similar service, does one thing that helps get around this - it has an honor system where you can say "I've mailed this movie back today" and it will ship out the next one.

varaon• 16 years ago

There's an existing and established competitor in the mailed DVDs business: http://www.zip.ca/

Postal service has always been good for; depends how far back you're talking.

jarek2• 16 years ago

When were you a credit analyst that dealt with Canada?

waterside81• 16 years ago

I'd guess that cost is also an issue. The Canadian market is a tenth the size of the US but is spread out across the entire continent. One of my startups ships kids books. We pay $8 to ship from Toronto to Vancouver using Canada Post and that's with a large volume discount, but if I want to ship to the US using USPS from our New York distribution center, I pay $2.30 to anywhere in the lower 48. Also, the US deliveries take no more than 3 days, while Canada Post takes up to 5 business days - and that's expedited.

Having said all that, why bother setting up the logistics required to ship DVDs when you can just stream them to a population that is heavily wired and internet literate.

chopsueyar• 16 years ago

Any Canadians here that can comment about your country's postal service?

Rates, delivery times, etc.

togasystems• 16 years ago

Stamps are as follows:

$0.57 Nationally

$1.00 To the United States.

The delivery times vary from a single day to week, depending on the destination.

I do not believe that Netflix will ever ship dvd's from the states as Custom's Brokerage fees are quite high.

Naga• 16 years ago

Finally! Maybe this will force ISPs to raise the bandwidth cap.

jarek2• 16 years ago

Not to rain on the parade, but I think it's unlikely considering the largest ISPs are also TV providers.

When an eventual CRTC ruling declaring the caps anti-competitive is your best hope, you know not to expect much fast.

MikeCapone• 16 years ago

Can a US Netflix user describe to us Canadians what is available on their streaming service? Are films coming out at the same time as they do on DVD? What TV is available? Most TV series from big networks? Any smaller networks? HBO & Showtime?

How the video and audio quality when you stream? Closer to 480p?

Now when I go to Netflix.com they just redirect me to the placeholder at netflix.ca..

elq• 16 years ago

The content for Canada will be different than the content for the US. Different rights holders and different licensing.

the SD streams are 480p, the HD streams are 720p.

Netflix touches down in Canada this fall

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