The big news for this week is that Netflix has come to Canada!

For those of you not familiar with Netflix, it is a service that has been running in the USA for many years. Using a computer, Wii, PS3, XBox 360 (coming soon), or Boxee (coming November 21 – more on Boxee later in this post), you can view thousands of TV shows and Movies for $8 a month with your first month free. In my opinion, a great deal. In the US it is $9 a month, but that also includes one free DVD rental a month – something they don’t plan on doing in Canada at this time.

I signed up right away and I plan on continuing my subscription once the trial runs out. Before you get all excited that you will now be able to cancel your satellite or cable TV, wait until you see the selection. I had no illusions that Netflix would be a replacement, but rather compliment my cable service (Rogers). The main complaint with the Canadian Netflix is that is does not have a very current selection of TV shows or movies and that everything is old and obscure (with the except of Mad Men, which they don’t even have on the US Netflix) and that it doesn’t compare to the US version.

All of this is true, but I find the selection more than enough to keep me happy until they add more content. The service has been running less than a week up here and Netflix needs to negotiate with all the Canadian partners to get the same rights to some more shows and movies – it’s not a simple matter of flipping a switch so we can watch the US version. You can thank the CRTC for that.

I recommend that everyone with any interest in streaming TV shows and movies give this a try. I’ve hooked up a laptop to my plasma TV with an HDMI cable and it’s just like watching cable TV.

Bandwidth Warning: Netflix uses about 1GB per hour of viewing. Unlike the USA, Canadian internet providers have put relatively low bandwidth limits on how much data you can transfer on your internet account. In the US it’s either unlimited or really high (250GB per month) while my middling Rogers account has a limit of 95GB.

Boxee

As I mentioned above there are several ways to watch Netflix on your TV including Boxee. I was thrilled to see that Boxee is available for pre-order at Future Shop and Best Buy for $199.

Boxee is a device that hooks up to your TV and, using a Wi-Fi connection, connects to the internet. The US version of Boxee allows you watch NetFlix, though your existing Netflix account, as well as YouTube and several other “web-casts”. What excites me the most about Boxee is that it hooks up to your own home network and will play any movies, pictures and music that are on you home system.

There is another system called Roku in the US that is not currently offered in Canada, but hopefully with the introduction of Netflix this will be coming soon.