News

• The Good: Finally, a legal place to buy or rent TV and movies
• The Bad: A special ARCHOS non-Macintosh media player that handles digital-rights management; almost no current prime-time TV shows; a small number of movies
• The Verdict: This is a good start for online video in Canada, but its future depends on Bell's commitment to it, as well as on the success of other online business models, including the popularity of video on demand from the cable companies
• 
  

One thing the Internet has taught us is impatience. If we want something, we want it now.

The just-opened Bell Video Store, from communications giant Bell Canada, seems to prove that point. It opened Wednesday with almost 1,500 TV shows and movies for rent or purchase ranging from $1.99 to $19.99. Renters can order a given title and, once it has started to play, have 24 hours to watch it. Buyers can play the show as often as they want.

Bell understands the concept of impatience — or at least part of it — when it emphasizes two features of the service: It will bring new movies for sale online the same day they are released to your local DVD store, and that movies or TV shows will start to play only moments after they start downloading to the computer.

What Bell does not boast about is the modest number of titles available. With 674 movies and 822 TV shows, the range of Bell's titles competes with ordinary corner video stores in every way except convenience. Browsing through the titles, one is struck by the small number of recent films, a larger number of movies dating back two to four decades and, in the case of a series of silent Laurel and Hardy titles, eight decades.

Many of the older films are classics, but don't expect to put together your own personal film festival of, say, Gloria Swanson or Jackie Chan movies. In fact, the films and TV shows offered here have arrived primarily because they have successfully navigated a series of contractual hurdles, such as their studios' relationships with Bell, their previously signed distribution agreements, their release date and their price on either side of the U.S.-Canadian border — all of which can vary wildly. Their presence in the digital stores has less to do with your tastes and more to do with the Canadian rights quagmire — and that's the main reason why Apple does not bother to load the Canadian iTunes store with digital content for its iPod or Apple TV products.

Moreover, the range of titles to some extent also reflects the necessities of Bell's marketing strategy. It has a large number of children's shows, many of them from Corus Entertainment, and classic TV shows — which Bell calls "under-served market segments."

Bell is quick to say that 1,500 titles is very good for a store that has just opened its digital doors — and indeed the entire business of online video is a nascent industry — and we shouldn't expect a vast selection immediately. And of course that makes sense. But then again, members of the online generation have higher expectations than they did when all they had were bricks-and-mortar DVD stores, and will not be satisfied just because a film downloads quickly; they want specific movies and shows.

And so a visit to Bell's online store, with its limited selection and lack of current prime-time TV shows, provides less instant gratification than downloading a movie or TV show of dubious provenance using BitTorrent: How can a store stocked with a small number of titles compete against the entire Internet, which — for better or worse — has changed people's expectations of availability?

Assuming viewers are quite willing to pay for their entertainment and don't really care where it comes from, they are being limited to what an online store is offering or being tempted to rummage about in the vast world of pirate booty. It's not because pirated video is free, but just that there is a greater selection out there. Viewers might have to work a little harder to find it — BitTorrent sites are constantly playing hide-and-seek with copyright authorities — but they're more likely to find what they're looking for on the Net. Put another way, online video stores will have growing pains because for most people, finding movies on the Internet is less about convenience than it is about choice.

For instance, my family has recently developed a taste for a Canadian TV series called The Murdoch Mysteries, a charming combination of CSI and Due South set in 1895 Toronto, but we missed a few of the earlier episodes. I'd be very happy to rent them, but they haven't yet reached the Bell Video Store (or bricks-and-mortar DVD stores), leaving me to wait until some faceless executives at CITY-TV, which produces the series, sign a deal some day in the future. Then again, they might not. For CITY-TV, I represent market demand, and CITY-TV is not satisfying it. As part of the Internet generation, what are my options?

Likewise, forget about getting a decent Swanson or Chan film festival from the Bell Video Store: No Swanson or Chan titles are in stock.

The same goes for fans who missed episodes of favourite TV shows such as Lost, Desperate Housewives or American Idol. On the other hand, if you missed the Dick Van Dyke Show that started airing in 1960, you can soothe your yearning for $1.99 per black-and-white 22-minute episode. Also available are The World Series of Mahjong (in Mandarin), Franklin the Turtle, the 1973 Dom DeLuise vehicle Lotsa Luck, and — a real gem here — a series of 20 films by the great silent film director D. W. Griffith repackaged for TV under the title Years of Discovery.

As far as demand is concerned, the Bell Video Store is much like dropping by a small DVD store to see what might be available. But shopping at a legitimate online store is a much more frustrating experience if you go about it the other way — knowing what you want and trying to find it there.

The issue of convenience or choice has yet to sort itself out. Ask Bell about its strategy, and you'll be told about getting your movies quickly. Ask a competitor, such as the cable company Rogers, and you will be told that movie watching can be just as convenient using the video on demand service via the set-top box. The first assumes you own a computer; the second assumes you subscribe to the Rogers cable service.

That might change when the technology of convenience is in wide distribution. A prime criticism of Bell's Video Store is succinct, though slightly wonky: Who wants to watch Lord of the Rings from an office chair? That argument will become irrelevant once most people have media-extender hardware, such as an Xbox, which can stream content from your computer directly to your giant TV screen in another part of the house.

Rogers claims a larger number of titles in its less-convenient video-on-demand rental stores, but Bell's content can be viewed on portable devices, even a laptop on an airplane.

The situation is so volatile that other Canadian players have joined the fray — notable among them Zip.ca, which allows you to order a movie from its online catalogue, but you have to wait for it to be sent to you in the mail, just as soon as it's available. Shortly after Microsoft releases its Zune pocket media player it should open the Canadian version of the Zune Marketplace, which will compete not only with the Bell Video Store, but also offerings from as handheld-only Canadian company called Mobovivo.

Bell's Video Store requires a customer to register and download a combination video player and upload and download manager, which uses the ARCHOS digital-rights-management technology to protect Bell and its partner, Paramount Digital Entertainment, from piracy. (The software, alas, will not run on the Apple Mac platform.) The movies and TV shows can be downloaded from the computer to a variety of portable devices that can run the ARCHOS media player. Up to four other players can be registered to play the content, and can be un-registered as the need arises.

In terms of definition, Bell says its movies are "DVD quality," though there's no real standard being used here. Bell says its movies are usually about 720 by 480 pixels, which is a common standard in DVD resolution. Even then, quality can vary because some of Bell's older offerings have been restored; viewers' TV sets also handle resolutions differently. Whatever the case, it's certainly not high-definition TV; there's no word yet on whether or when Bell will offer Blu-ray quality video from its online store.

It's a little unfair to carp about the Bell Video Store at this stage because its main attraction, its range of movie and TV titles, is at start-up levels. We will watch its catalogue as time moves on.

Selling TV and movies online will work for Bell if the company is really serious about bidding aggressively for new content and attracting other Tellywood studios besides Paramount to its stable of content suppliers. This is a cut-throat field, and only deeply committed players will survive and flourish.