MONTREAL – When Cogeco Connexion announced in 2018 its next generation video platform would come via MediaKind’s MediaFirst TV Platform, it said the new product would be in the market by the end of 2019.
While it is currently being tested in employee and other friendly homes, the company won’t be taking it to its Ontario and Quebec customers until sometime in the first quarter of 2020, a spokesperson told Cartt.ca this week.
“We’re getting ready to launch it progressively in 2020,” said Marie-Hélène Labrie, the company’s senior vice-president of public affairs and communications in an interview. Once launched, the new platform will gradually roll out “and we’ll have availability to most of our footprint by mid summer,” she added.
Labrie offered no specific reasons for the delay other than the company is taking its time to get things right, going “one step at a time.”
Cogeco’s MediaFirst solution is expected to be a generation ahead of what Bell, Telus and SaskTel have in the Canadian market each of which delivers TV via their own prior generations MediaFirst platforms (called Fibe, Optik and Max). In fact, Cogeco will be the first cable operator in North America to deploy the full MediaFirst, end-to-end system powered by the Android TV operator tier OS.
The cloud-based TV system Cogeco will launch (and will have its own name, but is still a guarded secret) will offer customers all of their media in one interface where all recorded content (up to 1,000 hours), YouTube, Netflix and other apps will be found (options which are also available through Cogeco’s TiVo-based system now, but not 1,000 hours of DVR space).
Also coming with the new platform will be a voice remote option where customers “will be able to use the Google voice assistant” to find shows, said Labrie. Customers will also be able to more seamlessly watch anywhere and everywhere and on any device, with restart and catch up options, something not available through its current platforms
And unlike the TiVo system Cogeco offers, the MediaFirst TV platform will allow each member of the household to personalize their own viewing experience, a-la Netflix and other modern video platforms.
“We see it as an experience and not just a product itself,” added Labrie. “It’s really an intense experience.”
The company plans to continue to run its legacy cable systems, including TiVo, as it launches the MediaKind-based system, but Labrie also added TiVo will be phased out. “They will co-exist for a couple of years (but) there will be a transition.”
