Fagstein » Rogers On Demand Online

Rogers’s half-assed quality control

Fagstein — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:51:48 +0000

Last fall, I was asked to participate in a beta test of Rogers On Demand Online, a video streaming website for Rogers customers only. It has since launched and anyone who subscribes to Rogers Cable or Rogers Wireless can watch videos on the site. My review pointed out the disappointing video library, which included mostly Rogers-owned stuff like Citytv and a few specialty networks that didn't really excite me (and are also unavailable unless you subscribe to the channel with Rogers Cable).

A couple of weeks ago I was on the site watching the one series that's worth my attention - the West Wing through its Warner Brothers channel - when I noticed the video was a bit dark.

Make that very dark. I could barely make out what was going on in many scenes. Adjustments to my screen's brightness were futile. So I clicked on the "feedback" link on the video and said that it was too dark.

This is the email I got back:

Dear Steve Faguy,

Thank you for emailing the Rogers On Demand Online Technical Support Team.

We understand your concerns, and would be happy to assist you.

In order to better determine the cause of the problem you are experiencing, please email us your username with the associated password and indicate the name, episode number, and the channel name of the show you are referring to.

If you have any further questions or comments you may want to try our new Rogers Live Chat - an agent is standing by to assist you online:

http://rogershelp.com/livesupport-v6/?queueID=20

For any Rogers Hi-Speed Internet Technical Support issues, you may also try emailing to:

support@rogersondemand.com

You may also use our help website www.rogersondemand.com/help as a reference

Sincerely,
Mustafa C.
Rogers Hi-Speed Internet
Electronic Support Group

I was floored. Here was someone from Rogers asking me for my password by email. That violates one of the principal tenets of online security, that nobody ever asks users for their passwords by email. After all, why would they need to? It's their system, they should know my password, or be able to reset it, or be able to access the account without needing my password. And why would they need my password to determine that one of their videos is darker than it should be?

The email also asked for my username and the name of the video, both of which should be unnecessary because they should be passed automatically through the form I filled out.

All this is beside the fact that someone should have, you know, actually watched the video before it went online. When all you're doing is rebroadcasting stuff created by other people, the least you can do is ensure you're doing it properly.

I emailed Rob Manne, the PR guy who originally invited me to test RODO, about this. He responded thusly:

Thanks for providing the feedback. We checked in with the Beta development team about your questions. As you know, the Beta service is continually being upgraded based on feedback we’re getting from customers and our Beta testers.

For question #1 – the feedback tool developed for the Beta wasn’t set up to carry program information, but we’re planning to get there in the future. Appreciate you flagging that for us – I can let you know when that’s been added.

For question #2 – The password request actually isn’t necessary, so we’ll be removing that item from the e-mail.

By the way, we’ve gotten similar feedback on the West Wing episodes and have tracked it to some errors with some files. We expect those files to be fixed today and viewers will notice a significant improvement.

We really appreciate you taking the time to continue trying out the service, and also you pointing out these fixes to us. Since your blog post in November, you’ll see we’ve added a lot more library content – both specialty and all-access – and plan to keep adding more.

So you can thank me for the fact that Rogers is no longer asking its users for their passwords in their default form letters.

I just hope they're taking more serious measures behind the scenes when it comes to security than the half-assed support system they have setup, whose troubling failures are dismissed by calling it "beta".

Rogers On Demand Online: Meh.

Fagstein — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 09:03:44 +0000

Homepage of Rogers On Demand Online

A few days ago, I got an email from a social media marketing guy at Rogers, inviting me to participate in a sneak preview of the Rogers On Demand Online service being launched on Monday (see coverage of that at Digital Home, Paid Content, Mediacaster).

It's being called a "Canadian Hulu", which is like saying CTV's video portal is a Canadian Hulu, except that CTV doesn't charge to watch its content.

I can't imagine why Rogers would want me participating in this. I guess they cast a wide net and don't read this blog, because otherwise they'd know I don't think very highly of Canada's telecom companies, and most of my reviews are negative ones.

This one is no exception.

I decided to try this thing out, curious at why I had to login twice using two different login/password pairs (I'm hoping this is just because of the beta test). Once I got in I had access to the vast library of television shows, movies, music videos and other stuff that ... wait, that's all?

Channels available at Rogers On Demand Online. Yeah, that's it.

Some library

These are the channels of content available. It may seem random until you break it down:

Channels owned (in whole or in part) by Rogers: Citytv, OLN, bio, G4, Rogers Sportsnet, vuguru
Government-owned or subsidized channels that offer cheap content: TVO, NFB, Galaxie
Independent producers offering cheap content: Super Channel, BiteTV/AUX, UFC, Big Ten
Kids specialty programming owned in whole or in part by Corus: YTV, Treehouse, Teletoon
Warner Brothers television

That last one is in its own category because it's where the only cool stuff I've found so far comes from. The West Wing, Babylon 5, ER, Whose Line Is It Anyway and CHiPs. That, plus the kids programming and a few other shows like Cougar Town, Ugly Betty and Extreme Makeover Home Edition are about as good as it gets.

Oh, and they have Jon & Kate Plus 8. Yeah.

My favourite, though, is their feature selection from the Bio biography channel. It's an hour-long documentary about the life of Ted Rogers, created for OMNI (which is owned by Rogers) that couldn't be more of a corporate blowjob if it had been done by the Rogers Communications marketing department. (Actually, maybe it was?)

In other categories:

Movies: There are less than two dozen of them, the most interesting of which is Saw. In my test viewing with the latter, it was in square (not letterbox) format.
Interviews: All from UFC
Review/Short Subject: ditto
Web shows: All for Nots, Prom Queen and Sam Has 7 Friends, all of which come from vuguru and are country-locked on their websites in a most inelegant make-it-broken way
Highlights/Recaps: Sports-related. You're into U.S. college sports, right? Cuz that's all they got.
News Reports: Sports news from Rogers Sportsnet, almost all of it dated from more than a week ago
Trailers: We're being charged to watch this?

The West Wing in the Rogers video player

And even with its small TV library, you only get a half-dozen episodes of each series. Rogers says it plans to expand that number, but the impression is it could take months or even years to build a respectable library. For now, you can watch the pilot episodes of the West Wing and Babylon 5, but not much more than that.

Walled garden

Oh, and by "you", I mean paying customers of Rogers Cable or Rogers Wireless. You see, this isn't a free service like Hulu, it's free only for Rogers customers. And some specialty content (including Big Ten Network, Sportsnet and YTV) is only available if you use Rogers for television service and if you subscribe to those channels.

(And for licensing reasons, you can only access it if you're in Canada.)

Since Rogers cable isn't available in Quebec, that means a lot of stuff is going to be permanently off-limits to us. (I'm a Rogers Wireless subscriber - though not a proud one - so I'd get in on the basic form of this service once it launches.)

This is an unfortunate sign of the future of online video. Rather than being able to choose which online video service you want, or being able to see video directly on the website of the content creator, Canadians will be forced onto either Rogers, CTV, Canwest or other big portals, even by websites in the United States. And with much less CRTC regulation on the Internet (which is mostly good), they can use whatever anticompetitive methods they want.

Despite the lack of regulation, Canada's broadcasting web portals are becoming copies of the broadcasting television stations: giant bank accounts that pay through the nose for U.S. programming, package it with cheap, crappy homegrown stuff and make sure that the only way we can access what we want is through them.

Technical review

Beyond crapping all over Rogers for having an anemic video library, I should also offer a technical review of how the website works. I'd critique the technology used for actually streaming the video, but it's not Rogers technology. Like Canwest, Rogers outsources this to a U.S. service called The Platform. With the latter's help, any brain-dead monkey with a big bank account can setup an online video site. If you've been to the Global TV website to watch an episode of House, you know how the basics work there (especially with the commercials, which are just as repetitive at Rogers).

Commercial is off to the side for some reason

Still, there were a number of glitches as I browsed around. It would jump to a commercial in mid-sentence. And the commercials are off to the left for some reason, while the videos play in the centre. Occasionally I'd get "the selected item is not currently available". A lot of 404 errors.

There were some annoying things too. The titles of all the pages are Google-juiced, even though this is a walled garden and there's very little point in SEO. "Free TV Shows, TV Series, TV Episodes" and "Watch [SHOW NAME] for free on Rogers On Demand Online" are incredibly unhelpful titles, especially if I want to bookmark something.

"Lights down" mode is only kind of helpful

Among the in-video options is "dim lights", which makes the rest of the window darker (so as not to distract from the video). Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything to the browser itself, which means you still get those distracting elements.

fullscreen mode

One way around that is fullscreen mode, which does as you'd expect. The controls disappear (though not the cursor, annoyingly). But this is where you start to notice that this isn't exactly HD.

Digital Home gives actual numbers (480kbps), and says there wil be an option for higher-quality video, but for now it's a bit less than you'd get with a standard-definition television. That's fine for a small window in your browser, but it really shows in fullscreen mode. For a free service, I wouldn't care, but if I'm being asked to pay for this...

Interactivity: Haha, don't be silly

It is by no means required, but there is no room for user interaction here beyond choosing videos. No comments attached to individual episodes (there's a button for "feedback", but that seems to go to Rogers, not to the public), no way to bookmark or favourite episodes, clips or shows (beyond your standard browser functions) and the videos stop working if you leave them and come back later (say, after putting your laptop to sleep) without any way of marking your point in a video to resume it later.

And there's no way to embed videos onto a blog or Facebook page or any of that. They say they're working on it. But when most people wouldn't be able to see it anyway, what's the point?

These are problems shared by the other Canadian TV video portals, but it's noteworthy that Rogers hasn't added an obvious improvement on the others.

And, of course, it goes without saying that there's no way to download these videos to put on your iPod or other portable player. Rogers negotiates the rights only for streaming.

In a nutshell: it sucks

Technically, Rogers On Demand Online is an adequate video portal. Its library is pathetic, and it remains to be seen if the company can do something about that quickly. Its features beyond video watching are practically nonexistent (that's not a dealbreaker mind you - other features would just be icing on the cake), and because of the licensing handcuffs that Rogers has to wear to bring anything good online, there's very little you can do with the videos.

In short, Rogers On Demand Online is a poor cousin of the CTV and Canwest video portals (mostly because CTV and Canwest have greater television empires and have negotiated for better hit U.S. shows). Except Rogers restricts access to its own customers.

How disappointing.