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For $7.99 cdn. per month … a buck or so cheaper than its American brother, Canadians now have an online alternative to their local video store. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in Toronto Wednesday “It’s the lowest and most aggressive price ($7.99) we’ve had anywhere in the world for unlimited movie and TV shows”.

Canadians won’t be able to get physical delivery of Netflix movies like Americans can, but will have as much or even more choice for online streaming than American users.

Netflix reportedly chose Canada for its first expansion outside the U.S. because of the availability of high broadband connections to a large percentage of the population and  their fondness for watching movies.

Netflix announced back in July that they were setting up shop in Canada. They’ve made arrangements to provide content from studios like MGM, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, and Universal Pictures.

Netflix will also source content from  Lionsgate and other Canadian film distributors.

Coming to a TV in your living room … hi resolution TV shows delivered over your internet connection for as little as 99 cents each.  What ever happened to free?

On Wednesday Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs held up a small box to a San Francisco audience and announced the new version of Apple TV. It allows your TV to be directly connected to Apple’s Itunes store via your internet connection. The new WiFi enabled box will cost the consumer $99 as compared to $299 for the previous version.

You simply browse through the shows available and when you find the one you want it will start streaming it to your TV. The big deal is that with the previous version of Apple TV a show cost $2.99. So far only shows from ABC and Fox will be available through this service although the BBC has indicated its interest also.

Questions are being asked if this new Apple foray into Internet TV will rattle the digital doors in the TV industry to the same degree that the Ipod Jobs introduced 9 years ago has reshaped the music industry.

Jobs admitted that a lot of media content providers are nervous about jumping onto the new Apple bandwagon right now but he thinks they will once they recognize how the market is changing. The two other big TV networks CBS and NBC have declined to allow their shows to be shown this way.

Not everyone is convinced Apple is on the right path here. A lot of TV shows are already available for free online and Netflix has a flat rate plan that allows subscribers to look at practically unlimited content for a fixed price. Consumers until recently haven’t made a habit of renting TV shows the same way that they rent movies.  Are they willing to buy TV shows one at a time … even if they seem cheap?

However the Internet may represent a threat to all the players in the TV industry. With ever increasing Internet bandwidths and constantly improving technology to deliver hi res video services like Netflix and others are offering, we may see consumers switch away from satellite and cable offerings to Internet TV services. How also would this affect the existing TV advertising business model?

Others in the TV industry question the logic of allowing Apple to gain so much control over the distribution side of the market. The cheap downloads may greatly undermine the financial underpinnings of TV show production and the bundling of these shows to others such as Netflix for syndication.

A 25 show TV series that they can now bundle onto dvd’s and sell in a store for $50 might only generate half that revenue if streamed over Apple TV.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon has been in talks with some of media’s heaviest hitters to secure licensing rights to stream Tv shows and movies for their online subscribers.

Amazon.com Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is trying to get a bigger piece of the digital entertainment services pie that outfits like Netflix, Google, and Apple are dishing out to the public. According to the WSJ report Time Warner, MTV owner Viacom Inc. and General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal have all been contacted by Amazon about acquiring licensing rights to their digital content.

Netflix is already the elephant in the room when it comes to providing both streaming content and dvd content delivered by mail into the living rooms of America. Netflix has discovered this to be a growth market and has recently spent $200 million to jazz up its streaming content from Epix, which is a movie network backed by MGM, Paramount, and Lionsgate.

Netflix has seen its streaming numbers nearly double in the last year and is using revenue from its dvd rental business to secure programming for its web streaming business.

Some Amazon execs are reported to be a bit nervous about taking on Netflix because of the high licensing fees Netflix can afford to pay to stream their content. The costs imposed on Amazon to do the same may affect their stock prices negatively.

One ace that Amazon might have up its digital sleeve is to add the new streaming service onto existing Amazon Premium accounts as a freebie. Premium subscribers pay Amazon a $79 yearly fee that entitles them to free or reduced shipping fees on products they buy online there.

The proposed new subscription offering would be a change in direction from Amazon’s present video-on-demand service that hasn’t been as successful as Amazon would like. It presently sells films and TV show downloads and rents movies through its website and on Roku Inc.

Rumor also has it that Apple Inc. will announce in the next few days a deal it has made with Fox and Disney to stream downloads of Tv shows through its Itunes store for 99 cents each.

Media companies are walking a delicate balance here about how to provide content, and at what price, to cable and satellite services as well as the Internet … which is slowly merging with Tv channels. For 2010 it’s estimated that the combined revenue the media companies will receive from the tv broadcasters for their content is about $30 billion.

Right now the media content providers seem to be licensing only their older stuff to the streaming companies and in this way trying not to cause a drop in their commerical tv revenue stream.