Discovery+ Canada Streaming Service Launches
Discovery+ launched their direct to consumer streaming service on Tuesday October 19th, 2021 in Canada. It offers access to a huge library of content from the Discovery parent company including HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Discovery Channel, Discovery ID, OWN, Travel Channel, Animal Planet, DIY Network, Cooking Channel and more.
The US version of the service was already launched last year on January 4th, 2020 and we did a full review of that service here.
The Basics
Discovery+ Canada is available to stream on a wide variety of devices at launch including most smartphones, tablets and desktop browsers, and most connected devices, including Amazon Fire TV streaming devices and Amazon Fire TV Edition Smart TVs; Apple iPads, iPhones, iPod Touches and Apple TVs; Google devices and platforms including Android phones, tablets and Android OS devices, Chromecast with Google TV, Google Chromecast and Chromecast built-in devices; Microsoft Xbox One and Series S and X devices; the Roku platform; and Samsung Smart TVs from 2017 and newer.
Discovery+ Canada has two price points. $4.99 (plus tax) Canadian a month for the version of the service with ads and $6.99 (plus tax) Canadian a month for the version that is ad free. An initial 7 day free trial of the service is available.
Discovery+ Canada allows you to stream on up to four devices at one time.
You can subscribe to Discovery+ Canada in a variety of ways. You can sign up directly on their website and pay via a credit card or Pay Pal. You can also subscribe directly through Roku, Apple TV and other devices.
First Look
Once you have set up your subscription you can log in and set up profiles for different users. Discovery+ Canada allows a maximum of 5 profiles to be set up.
You can pick from a small handful of icons for each profile and you can give each profile a custom name. Discovery+ Canada also allows you to set a language preference for profiles with the choices of English or French.
You can add, delete or edit these profiles anytime you want.
Choosing a language preference for your profile on Discovery+ Canada
Once you log in and set up your profiles you are then presented with the home screen which has the content sorted by brand near the top. You can see below what this looked like on the day the service launched.
Over the next week we’ll be looking under the hood of this new service and adding to this article. We’ll detail some of the content available and what is missing and more importantly we’ll compare Discovery+ Canada to the US version of the service.
Content Categories
First off let’s compare what top level content is available on Discovery+ Canada versus Discovery+ US.
Discovery+ US
Discovery+ Originals
Magnolia Network
HGTV
Food Network
TLC
Investigation Discovery
Discovery Channel
Planet Earth
OWN
Travel Channel
A&E
Animal Planet
History Channel
Lifetime
Science
DIY Network
Cooking Channel
The Dodo
Now This
PopSugar
Seeker
Thrillist
Destination America
AHC
Discovery Life
Discovery+ Canada
Discovery+ Originals
Magnolia Network
HGTV
Food Network
TLC
Investigation Discovery
Discovery Channel
Planet Earth
OWN
Travel Channel
Animal Planet
Science
DIY Network
Cooking Channel
Destination America
AHC
Discovery Life
The noteable standouts missing from Discovery+ Canada are A&E, History Channel and Lifetime. In Canada A&E and History channel are maintained by Corus. Corus has its own streaming service called Stack TV which we reviewed previously here. History Channel is part of Stack TV and yet A&E isn’t.
Discovery+ Originals
One of the draws of any new streaming service is the fact that they will have content that they produce that is exclusive to their streaming service only. Discovery+ is no different. Below is what this section looks like on Discovery+ Canada at the time of launch.
The full list of Discovery+ Originals can be found on here on Wikipedia.
The real question is how does Discovery+ Canada compare to the Discovery+ US version when it comes to the Discovery+ Original programming?
On the Canadian version of the service you will find the Discovery Originals divided by sub sections like Featured, Documentaries, True Crime, Relationships, Paranormal & Unexplained, Home, Food, Adventure & Nature and Lifestyle.
Compare that to the Discovery+ US Discovery Originals section where they have Featured, Paranormal & Unexplained, Documentaries, True Crime, Relationships, Home, Food, Adventure & Nature, Lifestyle and a whole section dedicated to Start Your 90 Day Journey. You can see the same section on the US service below.
HGTV
The HGTV section on Discovery+ Canada does have a lot of content on it initially at launch. It includes 11 full seasons of Flip or Flop, 5 full seasons of Home Town and 178 seasons of House Hunters.
You can see what the HGTV section looks like below.
If we go deeper we can see below all of the shows on Discovery+ in the HGTV section listed from A- Z.
There is however a lot missing from the HGTV section especially when you compare it to both the US Discovery+ service and StackTV.
Discovery said that Discovery+ Canada would be a partnership between Discovery and Corus. What they have yet to clarify is what exactly that means.
Will StackTV content from HGTV be on both services? So far based on what we have been able to see the answer is no.
Here is a list of HGTV shows that we found that are on Stack TV but not on Discovery+ Canada.
Island of Bryan (3 seasons), Leave it to Bryan (6 seasons), Scott’s Vacation House Rules (2 seasons), Love It or List It Vancouver (6 seasons, although Stack TV does not include every episode of all 6 seasons), House of Bryan (3 seasons) and Property Brothers (StackTV only has seasons 1 - 4 missing season 5, they do have season 6 then missing seasons 7 - 20 but do have seasons 21 - 24. They do not have every episode of the seasons they do have.)
None of the shows above are on Discovery+ Canada.
But what about the US Discovery+ streaming service?
When it comes to the US service it definitely has more. It has Love It or List It (19 seasons) as well as Love It or List It Vancouver but they call it Love It or List It Too (10 seasons) as well as Love It or List It Australia.
They have Island of Bryan which on the US service has been renamed to Renovation Island but they only have 2 seasons. In fact many of the Bryan Baeumler shows are just starting to appear on the US service as of recently. He wasn’t up until recently well known in the US. You will find some early seasons of some of his other shows there like Renovation Inc, Renovation Inc The Beginning, Renovation Inc Home Sweet Home and Renovation Inc The Lake House. It’s still more than the Discovery+ Canada and Stack TV has.
They also have Scott’s Vacation House Rules (2 seasons) but the show is simply called Vacation House Rules.
The US Discovery+ service also has every episode of Property Brothers (14 seasons) as well as Property Brothers Buying + Selling (8 seasons) and Brother vs Brother (7 seasons).
You can look at the full A-Z list of HGTV shows on Discovery+ US below.
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