I signed up for the new beta of the new Rogers on demand service yesterday morning to see what all the hub-bub was about. I had heard some buzz starting last week that Rogers was launching a Hulu type service available to Rogers customers. I got excited as I’m a Rogers phone and Internet customer, so I figured this would be pretty awesome. Canada has long been tailing behind the US in our ability to watch TV content streaming online for free. If you’re like me and expected Hulu for Canadians, then you’re in for some disappointment.

Rogers On Demand beta service

Content
Rogers has built a website on the same platform on which Hulu was created, but that seems to be about where the similarities ends. Since this is a beta the content is limited pretty much to Rogers properties(CityTV, Sportsnet, G4), mixed with a smattering of Canwest Global(Slice, Food Network) and Corus Entertainment(YTV, Treehouse) channels mixed in as well. Aside from the stuff from CityTV, there really isn’t any big network shows available on the site. There are a smattering of full length movies as well.  I don’t want to bag on the content since the service just launched yesterday, but knowing how the Canadian content providers are at odds with each other, I’m not holding my breath on whether the channel selection will get better.

Tiered system online
Where things really go off the rails is when you try to access content from channels you don’t subscribe to. As a non-cable subscriber, I have access to very little of the content on the site. If I want to watch an episode of Slice’s Til Debt Do Us Part or any Sportnet content, I’m out of luck with RoD. I can go to the Slice.ca and watch every episode from season 1 – 8 for free, but I can’t watch the 3 old episodes available on RoD because I don’t subscribe to that channel. To me this is essentially Rogers attempting to create a tiered “cable television 2″ online.

As a person who has abandoned cable and satellite in lieu of paying for loads of crap I’ll never watch, you would figure Rogers would be trying to court people like myself to use their service.  Maybe their intent is to simply create a value added service for their cable customers, but if that’s the case, don’t compare the service to Hulu. Hulu is probably the one thing that the MPAA and television networks have done right when it comes to bringing their content to the world. Content providers actually working together to provide a valuable service to end users in an easy to use format.

What Rogers has built is essentially a platform meant to exclude satellite subscribers and those who don’t subscribe to either service. 6 months down the line we’ll probably have a similar website for Bell Expressvu, which will only compound the problem as Bell will keep all the CTV content and this will become the next frontier of the Rogers versus Bell battle in Canada.

To Canadians this has to be frustrating. Rogers seems to have a reasonable start with this website, built using a proven technology. The site is usable, aside from the horrible navigation. The video that is available is pretty good quality.  I have often heard the refrain of Canadian users about being envious of US only Hulu site and we’ve now waited over 2 years to get something similar.  Ideally Canadians deserve better.  Guess we’re back to waiting for hulu.ca.