Wouldn't it be nice. As a Canadian who hasn't had cable for a decade, every six months or so I check on options. I subscribed to Netflix when we got it here, and it's cheap and good, but I'd love to be able to access HBO and other movie content.

I tried to find a legal download of Bladerunner the other day, and got the following:

1) Amazon.com geofenced it

2) Google Play won't let me download it (I have "bought" movies on Google Play before, but like any digital play-for-now service they will eventually become unavailable to me: I will no longer buy digital content I can't rip to an open format, because temporary proprietary access is not what I'm looking for.)

3) iTunes doesn't have it

4) Amazon.ca doesn't do digital downloads of films, near as I can tell. They certainly didn't have the one I was looking for.

All I want to be able to do is pay for a legal digital copy of a film, and I can't. I can buy a piece of plastic with the bits burned into it that I have no device to play, but that's a ridiculous waste.

I didn't torrent the film... I just ended up saying, "Screw it. No sale for me."

Business 101: make it easy for customers to give you money.

This is something that digital streaming companies (other than Netflix) have not mastered.

Bell owns the rights to the HBO name here, and currently bundles HBOGO (and HBO content) under TMNGO. You currently need to be a subscriber on one of their "approved" TV providers to access it, like HBOGO.

Now Bell will likely make some concessions to prevent complete Canadian public outrage, but whatever the US gets, I'm sure the Canadian version will have a few drawbacks added to the existing ones in the US service.