Bell to close online video store
New rentals, purchases at Bell Video Store already halted
Last Updated: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 | 2:16 PM ET
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Bell Canada is closing its online video store just more than a year after launching it, the company said in a note on its website.
The note warned that the Bell Video Store will be discontinued on July 15. New purchases and rentals have been discontinued, as of Monday.
Bell, with its corporate headquarters in Montreal, launched the store in May 2008 to sell and rent TV shows and movies for download. The service put the company in direct competition with Apple Inc.'s Canadian iTunes store.
At the time, critics pointed out that users were limited in the players they could use to watch the videos.
They had to install the Bell Video Store media player on their computer, and could only run the service on PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system or owners of some mobile media players from Archos.
Users could not play videos on either their iPods or on computers running the Linux operating system.
The site was a partnership between Bell, digital content services provider ExtendMedia and a number of studios, including Paramount Pictures, Corus Entertainment, Maple Pictures, Eros Entertainment and Image Entertainment.
Bell spokeswoman Julie Smithers said the move will allow the company to focus on Bell TV online, which allows subscribers access to things like the program guide and the option to buy pay-per-view content to watch on television.
"We will take key learnings from the video store and apply them to Bell TV," she said.
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