Confirming rumors that circulated months ago, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will visit Toronto tomorrow to announce a subscription-based, streaming video service for Canadians — the first international expansion of the U.S.-based online video company. Netflix will not extend its DVDs by mail offering to Canada, however.

The news comes from a Reuters report that doesn't provide any information about plans, pricing or availability. We also don't know exactly what movies and TV shows will be offered yet, but the library will likely be different from the one that U.S. consumers enjoy because Netflix must form separate agreements with movie and TV studios and distributors in each country it enters.

According to ReadWriteWeb, Netflix will use Canada as a trial for international expansion. Hastings and other Netflix executives will take some time to see how the service performs there before expanding to any other countries.

Hastings has said in the past that he expects Wi-Fi and Netflix to be built into all televisions before long — a good thing, since he believes that the company will live or die by how effectively it transitions from shipping DVDs to streaming videos online. He doesn't expect to stop shipping DVDs until 2030, though, so we may yet see a Netflix DVD-by-mail service in Canada after all.

There's already an incumbent champion in Canada's DVD-by-mail market. It's called Zip.ca, and it also rents DVDs at kiosks like Redbox does in the U.S. Netflix has yet to enter that market, but Zip.ca wants to expand into Netflix's territory; the company announced plans with CinemaNow to offer online video to Canadian consumers last year.