Canadian cord cutters will soon have one more options later this year. Canadian broadcaster Bell Telco announced they have partnered with HBO and several major Hollywood movie studios to lunch a new streaming service similar to Netflix. The service has no official name yet but goes under the project name “Latte”.
“Project Latte addresses a significant gap in the Canadian TV system and allows TV providers to greatly enhance the value they provide to their clients,” said Kevin Crull, president, Bell Media. “We are incredibly excited about the potential for this product and how it fits into our overall portfolio of Canada’s best television brands and programs.”
Mike Cosentino a senior VP at Bell Media, added “Our singular focus on TV series, along with our established studio relationships in Hollywood and beyond, means we are uniquely positioned and hyper-focused on delivering the best TV programs to the most-devoted TV lovers.”
Saying the server will be hyper-focused sounds like a code word for a limited catalog at launch. Apparently HBO content will make up 10% of all content on the service at launch. Getting HBO to sign up will be a major boost for the new service but no details have been released on how recent the content will be. It is expected to be a similar deal as the Amazon Instant deal from earlier this year. That would likely mean HBO would give Bell access to HBO shows from a few years ago.
Competition is always good for the consumers but a catalog that limited may mean similar fate for this new service as the Verizon RedBox Instant that shut down earlier this month.