Rogers on Demand - Canadian Hulu?

Clearly not now. And unlikely in the future.



But anyway - one more source of online TV for [at least some] Canadians. Just launched this week (first week of December 2009) RogersOnDemand.com at the moment hosts few dozens of TV shows and movies.

There are couple of gotchas. First of all you have to be existing paying Rogers customer. To create an account you first should authenticate yourself either by using Rogers Cable Modem (I suppose they just detect your IP address or something), via SMS over Rogers cellphone or presenting your rogers account #. If you are not subscribed to any Rogers services - you are out of luck. No Rogers on demand for you.

Gotcha #2 - even if you are the Rogers customer, you can not access all the shows. For any shows that require subscription to "speciality channel" you'll be offered - yes, to subscribe to that channel. See that "lock" icon on the screenshot? Yes that's restricted channel.


Gotcha #3 - # of the programs available online. Not really a lot. Other non-restricted canadian hulu alternatives do provide more programming online than Rogers. Though - here I'll give Rogers benefit of the doubt - they just went to beta stage and promise to make more programming available soon. Will see...

As far as picture quality goes - good enough. Can't find any HD content there, but for SD - no complains.