Many TV shows and movies available online in the U.S. are blocked to users in Canada, but Canadians are still among the most voracious consumers of online video in the world.

Canadian companies could take advantage and cash in or lose big, technology analysts say.

Canadians watch more hours of videos on average than internet users in the U.S., U.K., Germany and France, said Bryan Segal, vice-president of sales for the market research company comScore Canada.

In February, comScore found that 21 million Canadians, or about 88 per cent of internet users, watched an average of 10 hours of videos online for the month — 53 per cent more time than they spent watching videos online a year ago. The numbers even include pornography or sites that require a person to pay.

Only 76 per cent of internet users in the U.S. watched videos online, and they spent an average of just five hours, even though they have access to an enormous range of TV episodes and movies through websites such as Hulu.com and youtube.com. Much of that content is blocked to viewers in Canada due to distribution rights or copyright issues.

Segal said the numbers don’t surprise him, as he sees Canadians as news- and entertainment-hungry people.

“I think at the end of the day, the growth of video is a great thing for advertisers, media companies and consumers,” he said. “Online video’s a great opportunity.”

So far, in Canada the big winner is Google and its YouTube brand. The site allows Canadians to access the short, low-resolution videos, many of them generated and uploaded by the public. It does not let them watch the full episodes of TV shows such as Beverly Hillbillies and movies such as Casino Royale, something it recently started offering to viewers in the U.S.

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