MONTREAL – Vidéotron billed it as “the app that will change TV forever,” but in the end it wasn’t quite so revolutionary. On Thursday, the Quebec cable and wireless company announced a new iPad application for TV watching that offers a bunch of new features and integrates its video on demand, subscription VOD, live web streaming and home PVR controls into one seamless environment.
The bilingual app, which will be available in the coming days once Apple approves it, is available to everyone for free, and replaces the previous illico app, which has been downloaded about 500,000 times.
But only Vidéotron TV subscribers will be able to profit from most of the features.
Users of the app will be able to search all content from the various services at the same time, can order a TV show or movie from the on-demand catalogue, watch a selection from the Club illico over-the-top service, stream live TV from the 70 linear channels that Vidéotron has the rights to stream, and program their home PVR, all from the same interface.
The only thing it doesn’t do is allow users to watch content from their home PVR on the iPad. That’s a feature for a future app, the company says. But the app does allow users to control their set-top boxes, changing the channel from the iPad, telling it to play an on-demand program, or even turning it on and off, almost as if the app replaces the remote control. The communication happens through the Internet, but is very fast. A demonstration at Vidéotron’s headquarters showed commands taking effect within a second.
Jean-Pierre Lévesque Gauvin, director of new TV and entertainment products, said the application’s development involved several dozen Vidéotron employees, as well as external partners.
An Android tablet app is in the works and will be released in the coming months, said Vidéotron president and CEO Manon Brouillette.
The app also includes other integrations. Movies come with ratings from IMDB and Cinoche.com, the online reference for Quebec films.
There’s also integration with Facebook and Twitter. Shows with official hashtags will have them listed in the schedule, facilitating interaction with other fans of those series. There are also links to Wikipedia to look up more information on actors, for example.
“We wanted to make this (platform) agnostic,” Brouillette told Cartt.ca. “We say, tell us what you like, and the entire catalog, whether it’s video on demand, Club Illico or live TV, will be proposed to the client. It’s something nobody else does (in Canada).”
Additional touches include grouping HD and SD feeds together rather than spacing them 600 channels apart, and allowing people to select whether to record a show in SD or HD. And the app allows clients to create multiple profiles, so each family member can control their own set-top box and have their own settings for favourites and other preferences.
