TORONTO – Rogers Communications has officially launched its long awaited cable TV upgrade this week as it begins to aggressively market Ignite TV in Ontario.
A TV spot featuring Lucy Liu, Gordon Ramsay, Paul Sorvino and real live Rogers technician Peter Dafos began airing Monday and Rogers has built three mobile units which will show off Ignite TV to the masses at various events across the GTA this summer. One was at the PGA Tour’s Canadian Open this past weekend in Oakville. It’s easier to show than to tell when it comes to new tech, after all.
On Monday Rogers’ senior vice-president of content and residential products Eric Bruno (pictured) walked journalists through a demonstration of what the new flexible, personalizable, cloud-based TV platform can do. While Netflix, YouTube and YouTube Kids are all integrated in the system now (other apps will come later, such as Spotify and maybe even Bell’s CraveTV), there is also cloud DVR, instant VOD, an integrated sports app and a kids zone where parents can effectively lock their kids into a walled garden of safe programming, some of these sorts of things are available from its main competitor, Bell, and other platforms, too.
(Ed note: While Ignite is a nifty product powered by Comcast’s X1 video platform, Rogers really also wants everyone to know Ignite TV is just one piece of the puzzle to power its customers increasingly smarter homes. It is step one of a years-long play to be their customers’ everything when it comes to seamlessly connected communications, entertainment, security and smart home experiences.)
The real secret sauce that makes Ignite TV different, however, is the voice powered remote. Users can call up anything in the live TV, VOD, cloud DVR, Netflix or YouTube library by speaking into their remote. You don’t even need to know the title of what you’re searching. Say “Yo, Adrian” and Rocky will show onscreen. “May the force be with you” will display a list of various Star Wars titles.
Soon, said Bruno, the ability to tell your remote to shut off your home’s Wi-Fi (so the kids will come to dinner), or display a security camera on screen, will be part of the voice activated system, too. It’s a “say it, play it,” new offering, which doesn’t require a traditional, large, set top box. Rogers Ignite TV customers will need to be Rogers Ignite broadband customers, find a place for a small gateway in their homes and then need tiny set top boxes (about the size of two decks of cards which connect to the gateway via Wi-Fi) at each television to make the whole thing work.
“If we look at our road map and we’re having this conversation at this time next year, I would be surprised if you needed a set top box.” – Eric Bruno, Rogers
The next phase in the Comcast X1 roadmap is to eliminate the boxes altogether, but the voice powered remote right now needs those boxes in order to work. Rogers is also mulling the launch of a lighter, mobile subscription TV service, akin to Shaw’s Free Range TV or Bell’s AltTV, but according to Bruno, that decision hasn’t happened. Yet.
“The platform certainly supports it so we can easily do something like that. It’s something that we may choose or may not choose to do. We have not made that business decision yet,” he said.
However, as for a box-free system? That’s coming, and soon. “If we look at our road map and we’re having this conversation at this time next year, I would be surprised if you needed a set top box.”
Bruno also wouldn’t give away any subscriber penetration targets. Comcast itself reports that two-thirds of its 22-million cable customer base now has X1, which it launched in 2012 but he declined to say how quickly he thought Rogers might hit that penetration target.
In order to ease the transition for its customers, Rogers has also specially trained a group of technicians to install Ignite and has also designated its Kitchener-Waterloo call centre as its “centre of excellence” to support any and all sales and service calls from Ignite TV customers to make sure they get what amounts to a smart home concierge service from the company.
