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Video streaming has already gone mainstream, largely through the success of Netflix. This week brings the debut of Shomi, a Canadian-only service available exclusively to Rogers and Shaw customers.
The Netflix rival will be available online, through mobile devices and set-top boxes. The service will be coming to Xbox 360 and Chromecast in the future.
“For the past few weeks, we’ve had a rolling thunder of content announcements that position Shomi as the ultimate streaming destination with the must-have hit titles you can’t get on any other video streaming service in Canada,” Shomi general manager Marc Dinsdale said in a press release. “We know what matters to entertainment lovers, and it was imperative to us to bring the human experience back to video entertainment.”
Shomi will offer more than 1,200 hours of content of both films and television, but will focus on TV shows, including 2 Broke Girls, American Horror Story, The Blacklist, Da Vinci’s Demons, Modern Family, New Girl, The Originals, Sleepy Hollow, Shameless, Sons of Anarchy, and Vikings. It will also offer “first-window premieres” of such shows as A Young Doctor’s Notebook (starring Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe) and the CW’s upcoming iZombie (a comic book adapted for the small screen by Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas).
The service costs $8.99 a month, which is a dollar more than Netflix, but Rogers and Shaw customers who sign up for the beta will get a 30-day free trial.
While Shomi will be the first Canadian streaming service to launch, it’s not the only one. Last week, Bell announced its own service, codenamed Project Latte, which includes a deal for HBO shows, including Sex and the City, Six Feet Under and The Sopranos. No word on when Project Latte will launch or how much it will cost to subscribe.
Agencies/Canadajournal
So now instead of one bill to Rogers or Bell for TV I will have 1 to Rogers/Bell for internet, 1 addition to bell and or rogers for streaming programs and one to netflix for the rest. This is not to mention that, in Canada, many networks have exclusive broadcast rights to some shows carried on Netflix…most of these networks are owned by Bell or Rogers…you can bet that Netflix will no longer get access to stream them in Canada any longer once these new streaming options are online.