Rogers has been coasting for a long time with their antiquated PVR’s. They were old when they were introduced and have continued to lag behind in features and functionality in the past years. Finally, they have begun to offer a new PVR with more modern features that have been found in Tivo’s, Sling’s, Apple TV’s and other PVR’s for years. The Cisco 8600 is the new PVR that is available.

Notable features include:

• 1080p resolution
• Use a single PVR for the entire house, watch PVR shows on any TV
• Compatible with DLNA for sharing music/movies on a PC
• Ethernet connection for home networking

Look for Rogers to take advantage of some of the advanced features to offer much more interactivity to your television. Bell already offers controlling your PVR over the Internet.

Rogers customers just got a new service – watching TV shows over the Internet. Called Rogers On Demand, current Rogers subscribers get access to certain channels and content online with limited ads. Unfortunately, anything worth watching is probably not on the site right now, unless there’s lots of people wanting to watch old episodes of the West Wing. It doesn’t make up for the fact that Hulu is blocked from Canadian residents, but it’s a start. As the service gets more popular I hope the content improves.

Yes, the Kindle is now available to Canadians. This e-ink reader is the darling of the US for a while, and is now available here, albeit with a few caveats:

• customers will have to order it from Amazon USA. This is a potential disaster because this adds additional shipping costs ($21) and import fees ($31). I’m a little worried that Amazon has rushed this and not thought about the duty and PST/GST consequences – the government is going to add duty and GST and PST on top of when you import. What’s worse, the courier is probably going to be UPS, so customers will also be billed a brokerage fee on top of this. One might hope the “import fee deposit” of $31 will cover these costs, clearly all these charges are more than $31.
• Only the Kindle is available, the Kindle DX is not. That means you do not get the larger 10″ screen, increased storage and rotating display.
• Browsing is turned off. You will not be able to use the Kindle as a web browser. This makes no sense because it’s obvious they have a roaming agreement with a Canadian wireless carrier since you can purchase books wirelessly using 3G. I assume they did this in order to not incur data fees from the carrier. No doubt because our Canadian carriers are probably charging a lot more for data than the American carriers.
• This is unconfirmed but Canadian authors are not available to be purchased via Amazon for the Kindle. I have to look into this more but the licensing isn’t setup for Canadian publishers.
• If the Kindle is here, BRING THE KINDLE IPHONE APP TO US!! No, it’s still not available through App Store.

Update 11/20: CanoeTech believes that the Kindle is using the Rogers network for it’s 3G data.

If you’ve been lamenting that you can’t get an iPhone because you are with Bell or Telus, next week everything is going to change. On Nov. 4th, Telus starts selling the iPhone, and Bell will follow suit.

Prices are exactly the same as Rogers, and come with a 3 yr contract. There is a non-contract price but I don’t think many people will be willing to go for it.

• 8GB 3G for $100 or $600 without contract
• 16GB 3GS for $200 or $700 without contract
• 32GB 3GS for $300 or $800 without contract

Rogers has a huge problem, they’re running out of adjectives to brand their internet services. They have SIX cable internet offerings right now with their newest service called UltraHeavyExpressExtremePlusHighSpeed. It’s true, check their website.

The new UltraHeavyExpressExtremePlusHighSpeed service allows a theoretical 50mbps download and 2mbps upload speed.

For years, Rogers has allowed users of their cable internet service to check their usage. Even more recently, they gave alerts to people as they neared their usage cap and about to be charged more.

Well, tracking your wireless data has now become easier. Rogers added this functionality to their website this week. If you have a data plan, definitely check this service out because it could save you a lot of money.

Better instructions to navigate to this page can be found at Boy Genius Reports.

I was looking at the Rogers Internet plans today and realized that both the $60 Extreme and $47 Express service are now 10Mbps. The only differences are upload speed (1Mbps vs. 0.5Mbps) and bandwidth cap (95GB vs. 60GB).

I’m not much of an uploader and I’ve never downloaded more than 60GB, so it was an easy way to save $156 a year.

Boy Genius Reports, again the best blog for mobile news, is quoting the following Rogers text about upgrading if you bought an iPhone last year:

There has been a lot of excitement around the new iPhone 3G S and we wanted to recognize the early adopters who helped make the iPhone the hottest-selling handset in Canadian wireless history. We will be discounting the price of the iPhone 3G S by between $250 and $500 to provide savings to many of our iPhone customers.

What this means is that eligible iPhone owners can acquire the iPhone 16GB 3G S for as low as $199 or the 32GB for as low as $299 until July 31, 2009.

For Fido customers, we’re offering the Fido Rewards iPhone 3G S promotion. This enables iPhone customers to redeem FidoDollars towards a new iPhone 3G S with an additional $100 top-up from Fido.

For customers who don’t qualify for these extra savings, we are pleased to offer Rogers Wireless customers the iPhone at our cost on rogers.com. This cost – $580 for the iPhone 3G, $680 for the iPhone 3G S 16GB and $780 for the iPhone 3G S 32GB – represents the price we pay for the device plus a nominal fee for the SIM card. Customers can access these devices at retail locations for just $19 more for the three devices.

We’re also happy to announce that Rogers and Fido are extending the 6GB/$30 data promotion until July 31. This offer is valid for customers on a new or existing iPhone plan or customers buying an Android-powered HTC Magic or HTC Dream.

Five ways to save

1) For Rogers Wireless customers who bought an iPhone 3G between July 11 and Sept. 30, 2008, and with an average monthly spend of at least $100, Rogers will provide $500 off the cost of an iPhone 3G S. This special offer expires July 31, 2009 and comes with the addition of a one-year term to the customer’s existing service agreement.

·      16GB 3GS $199
·      32GB 3GS $299

2) For Rogers Wireless customers who bought an iPhone between July 11 and Dec. 31, 2008, but aren’t eligible for the above offer, Rogers will provide $250 dollars off the purchase of an iPhone 3G S. This special offer expires July 31, 2009 and comes with the addition of a one-year term to the customer’s existing service agreement.

·      16GB 3GS $449
·      32GB 3GS $549

3) All Rogers Wireless customers can upgrade to the iPhone 3GS at our cost at Rogers.com, or for a suggested retail price of just $19 more than our cost through our retail channels.

·      8GB 3G $580/$599
·      16GB 3GS $680/$699
·      32GB 3GS $780/$799

4) Fido customers can take advantage of the Fido Rewards iPhone 3G S promotion:
·      Use FidoDollars towards the purchase of a new iPhone 3G S
·      Fido will top up the FidoDollars amount by $100
·      This promotion does not include an extension or renewal of their service agreement.

5) New and existing iPhone customers can take advantage of a limited-time promotion of 6GB of data for $30, now extended until July 31. Other Rogers and Fido data plans will remain the same, including the only national standalone data plan at $25 per month for 500 MB. We know that this is the right plan for most Canadians – 93 per cent of current iPhone customers on a data plan use less than 500 MB of data per month.

One of my favorite mobile blogs, Boy Genius Reports, just found out the non-contract price of the new iPhone 3G S.

• $799 32gb
• $699 16gb

Those of you that committed to 3 year contracts for the iPhone 3G better save your pennies.

Let’s get this out of the way first, it’s available on June 19th at Rogers. Unfortunately Rogers has not updated their website with any description and they did not lower the price of the old 3G to $99 like AT&T did.

Although the outside isn’t much different, inside there are many changes both in hardware and software. A better processor and memory are suspected, but not confirmed by Apple at the WWDC today. Instead they focused on showing off the new functionality of the iPhone and iPhone OS including:

• Faster applications (new CPU and memory?)
• Records video
• 3MP camera with autofocus, autoexposure and white balance control
• Voice Control (including voice dialing)
• Compass
• Cut, Copy & Paste
• MMS
• Search
• Tethering
• Voice Recorder
• Nike+

See the guided tour at the Apple website for a very lengthy tour of the new phone.