Satellite TV Canada
The governing body for communications in Canada is the Canadian Radio Telecommunications Commission or CRTC, similar to the FCC in the US. The CRTC argues Canada will lose its culture if we get too much American television programming. However this can also be seen as a thin disguise for a blatant protectionist policy that ensures an audience for Canadian broadcasters like the government owned CBC. Therefore American satellite service providers like Dish Network aren't legally available in Canada, you must go through one of the Canadian satellite service providers.
Bell Express-Vu and Star Choice are both mere shadows of the American based satellite service providers. Protected from true free market competition with American satellite service providers the Canadian providers consistently offer fewer choices and are late to offer new technologies to their customers. In short decades past Canada was once a world leader in broadcast and cable technologies, today Canada is a broadcast media banana republic, thanks in large part to the CRTC's protection of our culture.
One of the biggest gripes to subscribers of HDTV satellite services in Canada is the lack of an HD-PVR. Bell Express-Vu uses EchoStar's receivers, the same as the ones used by Dish Network in the US. But Express-Vu is making Canadians wait for the latest High Definition -Digital Video Recorders. The DVR-921 is a high def satellite receiver with a 250 Gig HDD, enough for 180 hours of standard definition television or 25 hours of HDTV recording it's not available yet in Canada.
