Netflix announced today that it is offering unlimited movies and TV streamed over the internet into the homes of Canadians for $7.99 per month. As a consumer who is tired of paying ever increasing cable bills, I watched the announcement with some interest. Though Netflix is offering the first month free, the selection of movies and TV shows on offer at present is rather limited. Here’s a quick rundown of movies and TV shows that came back with “not available”: Toy Story, Shrek, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Alice in Wonderland, Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Coraline, Chuck and Big Bang Theory.
Even if Netflix’s selection were more extensive, we are still limited by Bell’s bandwidth cap of 25GB. Netflix says each hour of a movie or TV show will use up 1GB of bandwidth for standard TV and 2GB for HD. At that rate, a monthly bandwidth allowance of 25GB doesn’t go very far. One option would be to switch to an ISP like TekSavvy as many consumers frustrated with bandwidth shaping and throttling of the big telcos and cable companies have already done.
Now if only there was a way to watch a hockey game or the NFL or the Stanley Cup finals or the Super Bowl, we could be saying adieu to those cable bills pretty soon.
