TORONTO – On Monday, Rogers Communications made a commitment to 4K, ultra-high definition TV that no one else on the globe has yet made.
Beginning in 2016, the company will broadcast over 100 live sporting events (300 hours at least) in 4K, including all Toronto Blue Jays home games and at least 20 NHL games. It is also bringing to market a brand new Cisco 4K set top box for its cable customers, upon which Netflix will ride as an app, the company announced Monday.
Speaking of the global OTT video leader, Rogers has also signed a multi-faceted partnership agreement with Netflix to deliver content (4K and regular definition) more quickly and efficiently to Rogers customers via its Rogers Ignite Internet service which is about to be boosted to 1 Gbps speeds. The company also committed to securing as much 4K content through its co-owned (with Shaw Communications) OTT service, shomi and will make a new Sportsnet 4K channel available to all Canadian BDUs.
Rogers’ first 4K broadcast is scheduled to be the Montreal Canadiens at Toronto Maple Leafs on January 23rd.
While no overall dollar figure was disclosed for Rogers’ total 4K investments already made or the ones forthcoming, the company will spend many millions of dollars upgrading its network to its entire cable footprint in Ontario and out East (although CEO Guy Laurence was quick to add it will be done far more cheaply and much more quickly than its competitors), buying and deploying new cameras and other broadcasting technology in the Rogers Centre and Air Canada Centre, building two new production trucks at co-owned (with Bell) Dome Productions and building a new 4K master control at Rogers Media’s One Mount Pleasant headquarters. That doesn’t include the additional transmission costs of transmitting two signals from each game, one in 4K and the other in regular HD (but those cost increases are not as expensive as the shift from standard definition to high definition was).
When it comes to the network itself, Cartt.ca reported early Monday that Rogers will deploy Rogers Ignite Gigabit internet this year in downtown Toronto and the GTA, including: Harbourfront, Cabbagetown, Riverdale, King Street West, Queen Street West, the Financial District, Discovery District, Yonge and Bloor, and more, as well as Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Pickering, Ajax, and Whitby. It will be available everywhere Rogers Cable exists (passing about 4 million homes) in 2016.
The reason why Rogers can do it much more quickly than its telco competitor is that it doesn’t have to roll out new fibre optics to get to Gb speeds. The cable industry’s DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 standards let MSOs get faster via software, essentially. Laurence noted Rogers is “future-proofing” his customers with Rogers Ignite Gb (which will cost customers $149.99/month and come with unlimited data) and it “will be done far faster than other Canadian providers,” he said. Getting it done by next year is “about three years faster than some of our competitors" which have launched 1 Gbps projects this year.
Rogers is introducing 4K with the much ballyhooed – and brand new – HDR (high dynamic range) standard as well, which renders video with better color, contrast and resolution. In fact, the demos shown to reporters during Rogers’ launch event Monday in the infield at Rogers Centre of new 4K and HDR ready TVs were pretty remarkable.
“This is going to be a 4K Christmas.” – Guy Laurence, Rogers
Pricing for the new Cisco 4K set top box (pictured) was not released Monday but Laurence added they will be in the market well in advance of Christmas. He also told reporters Rogers made sure to secretly tell TV makers to be ready to ship to Canada this fall because Canadians looking to upgrade their TVs for Christmas will have a good deal of new content to look forward to watching on them. “This is going to be a 4K Christmas,” he added.
While many broadcasters complain bitterly that the signals they send to cable operators are not the signals 
customers see, thanks to the severely compressed video those cablecos send out in the name of network constraints, this will not be a problem with 4K on Rogers, insisted Laurence.
“Our engineers and the broadcasting engineers have been working for a long time in terms of making sure what they capture at the stadium ends up in the front room of people’s houses,” he explained.
“We own the team, we have the stadium, we have the production team, we have Sportsnet, we control the boxes and we control the infrastructure of what goes into the people’s homes. So we can control the end-to-end experience for the consumer in a way that most companies in the whole of North America and beyond can not do.
“The disconnect between what the broadcaster wants and what the cable company is willing to provide, that’s where you get that disconnect. That doesn’t happen here because we’re all on the same management team,” he explained.
ROGERS ALSO SIGNED A NEW agreement with Netflix as part of this tech and content announcement. “There are three elements to the deal,” Rogers SVP content David Purdy told Cartt.ca in an interview. “We are connecting and optimizing for the Netflix experience within our network. Two, we are integrating them into our set top box experience, and then three, we’re looking at ways for them to grow their base, leveraging our 4K boxes and our advanced network.”
Part of the deal involves locally caching the more popular content closer to the customer, which improves their viewing experience and network performance. “So, customers have a better experience, Netflix has lower costs for streaming and Rogers should have a lower cost structure in terms of not having to transport all that content because we’ll be caching it closer to the customer,” added Purdy.
Currently in Canada only Telus and Cogeco offer Netflix directly to customers on their advanced set top boxes and that addition is boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty. (Ed note: We have a definite opinion on offering Netflix via the set top.)
“We’re excited because we’re hearing from other MSOs who have integrated Netflix that the overall usage, engagement and NPS scores rise. (NPS = net promoter scores, or the likelihood that customers will recommend a product or service to others),” added Purdy.
