Not long after Clearwire announced their intent to begin lighting up a 4G LTE network, Sprint and a cabal of cable companies have begun to discuss the idea of a possible Clearwire acquisition.
Last we heard, Clearwire was waiting on $600 million in additional funding before any work on their LTE rollout could begin. Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House are currently in talks with the nation’s third-largest wireless provider to get Clearwire the necessary funds to build out their LTE network. → Read More
Comcast just rolled out a major update to its seven month old Xfinity iOS app that brings streaming access to the Xfinity on-demand library just like iPad users have had for several weeks. This opens up a massive database of streaming content for iPhone and iPod touch. But there’s a catch here. Only users that pay for Comcast’s digital TV service for their home will have access to the service. The revamped app also has access to more shows. There are now 6,000 hours of content from 25 programmers available through the iOS app. Plus, just as before, the app can also change the channel and manage a user’s set-top boxes. Get it free here. → Read More
Comcast donated $18,000 to a non-profit filmmaker’s group, the ReelGrrls, dedicated to giving young girls a voice and more confidence through film-making. One of the members expressed concern over the upcoming NBC/Comcast merger on Twitter, stating her disbelief that the FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker just quit to move to Comcast after approving the merger.
Almost immediately one of Comcast’s media relations people, Steve Kipp, pulled the funding:
Given the fact that Comcast has been a major supporter of Reel Grrls for several years now, I am frankly shocked that your organization is slamming us on Twitter. I cannot in good conscience continue to provide you with funding — especially when there are so many other deserving nonprofits in town.”
Talk about sinking to a new low. It seems that Comcast and perhaps other ISPs are blocking access to the notorious torrent site, ThePirateBay.org. The word comes from TorrentFreak who also reached out to the TPB team who indicated that they can’t confirm if an ISP is blocking the site but “there’s a significant drop in visitors from the U.S.” All I know is I, a Comcast subscriber, cannot access the site.
Comcast isn’t exactly known to be friendly with the downloaders or streamers. In the past they’ve limited and even blocked seeding of torrent files. The term throttling was synonymous with Comcast a few years back. The company eventually entered into a partnership with BitTorrent, Inc and was later asked by the FCC to stop the practices, but perhaps the company just moved to block specific sites in an effort to kill the bandwidth-sucking practice of torrenting.
Update: Comcast responded. → Read More
Now, let’s be charitable here and admit that it’s natural for people to perform similar duties in business as they might have in government, and vice versa. It’s called job experience. But honestly now. Voting in favor of the Comcast-NBC Universal merger and then leaving to join that company five months later? You’re joking, right? Other, more important people than me will be objecting to this, I’m sure, but I just wanted to put down for the record here how incredibly inappropriate this obviously is. Funnily enough, she criticized the merger process as taking too long. I wonder why! → Read More
The end times must be upon us because I never thought I would see Comcast allowing 3rd party set-top boxes to access On Demand. But that’s exactly what’s happening. TiVo and Comcast just announced Xfinity On Demand will soon be available on TiVo Premiere DVRs. The San Francisco Bay Area expected to be the first market with access, but others will follow as the service rolls through Comcast’s largest markets.
Surprisingly, in these select markets, Comcast will provide and install TiVo Premiere units but the On Demand service will be available on units sold at retail as well. According to the press release, “Comcast will install TiVo Premiere set-top boxes with its cable service at no additional charge” although monthly pricing wasn’t announced. → Read More
The news from NBC/Universal/Comcast is that the cable giant has finally made deals with both ABC and Fox to carry selected shows on their on-demand service. This is big news for the iPad set, because all four major broadcast networks are now available in a single service, on the iPad, without Flash.
Across town we hear talk of hardware acceleration linking up with Android to make Flash finally usable on every other device. This would be a good thing for Flash fans, who can make the argument that more devices will work with Flash than won’t. But in the new world of network broadcasting, the show’s over for Flash. Nobody cares what makes the picture dance on the screen, just that it does. → Read More
As Gigaom notes Netflix’s (global) subscriber base is now bigger than Comcast’s national one, a happenstance that should send fear into the hearts of cable providers everywhere. The numbers came from an earnings call today. → Read More
Comcast is about to nationally roll out its 105Mbps (!) Internet service. The ISP hopes to have the service in several of its top markets, including Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Miami, bringing the total number of potential subscribers up to 40 million. Considering so much of legitimate media consumption these days is based on streaming, having a super fast Internet connection will only help to a point. → Read More
So, Apple does a lot of things right. The Apple TV and iTunes combo offers an “it just works” environment that many people seem to like. So why are they having trouble getting out their video content? Recent market research from the NPD group, shows that Apple’s iTunes video delivery is in a three-way tie for third place at only 4% market share, while Netflix is way ahead at 61% and Comcast is second at 8%. → Read More
Comcast is a massive force in the TV industry. I mean, they’re everywhere including owning a controlling stack in NBCUniversal. What’s more is that they’re in an absurd amount of homes and business across the US. As Comcast goes, so goes home entertainment. As many large companies though, they’re a massive lumber beast and slow to react to market shifts and trends. That’s why their main cable boxes look the same as they did five years ago while smaller companies with different distrubation plans such as Dish Network can quickly roll out swanky features like Google TV.
Mr. Comcast, CEO Brian Roberts, is touring around this fine country on a bit of mission. Among a broad message that includes a big push for the company’s On Demand service, it seems he wants people to know Comcast has this fancy new thing called an iPad app. → Read More
UFC has joined the growing list of sports organizations that have gone 3D. This Thursday’s event, broadcast live on the Versus network from Louisville, will be the company’s first 3D broadcast. It’s headlined by Diego Sanchez (seen here looking menacing) and Martin Kampmann. → Read More
Launched just yesterday, Comcast’s Xfinity 3D will be a new full-time 3D TV channel offering up a big mix of content from music and sports to movies and original programming. Xfinity 3D joins ESPN 3D, n3D and 3net as full-time 24/7 3D content providers and they kicked off their premiere with an NHL hockey game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Calagary Flames. After the game, Kings of Leon played it out from Germany. This channel reminds me of HDnet, one of the first channels to be full-time HD, before many others joined. Does this mean that more 3D channels will come out and be full-time? → Read More
Not only does LittleBigPlanet 2 come out today, but the FCC pproved the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal. Will the two companies use their combined powers for good and not evil? A healthy skepticism may be in order. → Read More
We’ve covered Tunerfish, Comcast’s attempt at social video discovery, several times. Incubated by the Plaxo team, Tunerfish made its real world debut in June; featuring a deal with HBO. And in August, Tunerfish released its first iPhone app, allowing users to interact with TV shows on the go. Today, the Tunerfish is extending its mobile platform to Android phones with the launch of a new free app.
Similar to the iPhone app, Tunerfish for Android allows people to share with a single click what they are watching, on their social network(s) of choice. Tunerfish also displays which TV shows are trending among your friends, which gives users a way to discover shows they are not yet familiar with. And users are encourages to check-in to shows and movies. → Read More
Comcast this morning announced that it has doubled the amount of movies available on demand that were released the same day as the DVD in 2010, offering customers more than 200 “same-date movies” this year alone.
The company also revealed that its On Demand service reached a total of 18 billion views, this year (that is: the total number of views since the service was launched with a few hundred choices back in 2003). → Read More
This certainly changes things. You’ll recall that the Internet flipped out the other day when it emerged that Netflix‘s traffic carrier, Level 3, said that Comcast was taking advantage of its position as one of the nation’s largest ISPs by demanding more coin to pass on Netflix traffic to its customers. It is, in fact, largely boring tosh, but it speaks to something we’ve been talking about for some time. That is, of course, Net Neutrality, which I tend to capitalize for some reason, almost imbuing it with a greater sense of importance. No matter, for nor Comcast has told its side of the story, and things are quite different in its recollection of events. → Read More
The headlines are pretty rough: Comcast hates Netflix! Net neutrality is dying! Communist forces from Russia and Cuba are attack a small town in Colorado and a ragtag band of high school students band together to fight them (although, arguably, this may have nothing to do with Comcast/Level 3)! But what’s really going on here?
First, let’s understand how data gets from the cloud to you. This stuff costs a lot of money and carriers didn’t do it out of the kindness of their hearts. They want to be paid for their data centers. That’s where Level 3 comes in. Level 3 acts as both a backbone – meaning a massive, nationwide carrier of data – and a Content Delivery Network. Back in the old days, the backbone would be the only thing on the net. But once it became clear that hosting all your data on one server was a bad idea, CDNs grew up and allowed content providers to cache their data in different physical locations. You’d hit one CDN in California and I’d hit one in New York. Things worked faster that way. → Read More
A few months ago, we got a glimpse of Tunerfish, Comcast’s attempt at social video discovery, at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York. Incubated by the Plaxo team, Tunerfish made its real world debut in June; featuring a deal with HBO. And in August, Tunerfish released its first iPhone app, allowing users to interact with TV shows on the go. Today, the service is adding a number of new features, and releasing an updated version of its iPhone app and a new logo.
Tunerfish allows people to share with a single click what they are watching, on their social network(s) of choice in real time. Much like Twitter does for tweets, Tunerfish also displays which TV shows are trending among your friends (in the last hour, 24 hours, etc.), which gives users a way to discover shows they are not yet familiar with. The site also encourages people to check-in to shows on both its web-based app and iPhone app, much like you would in Foursquare or Gowalla. → Read More
In a post this weekend, I wrote about how the cable tv industry was finally stepping towards the cliff. And we’d learn more today when Comcast, the largest U.S. cable operator, reported earnings. Well, the numbers are out, and it’s not a surprise.
275,000 Comcast subscribers cut the cord last quarter. Its subscriber count is down 3.5% from the same quarter last year. To be fair, some of that loss was offset by a gain in 219,000 digital cable subs. Revenue was up as customers bought higher priced bundles of tv, internet and phone service.
During the earnings call, Comcast blamed the drop on the lousy economy. Always a handy excuse. Sure, many people are struggling right now, and it makes sense that the high cost of cable is an expense they can no longer afford. Comcast said, based on exit interviews, only a ‘small number‘ seemed to cut the cord for over-the-air signals, and they are not planning to switch to internet tv alternatives. But …. → Read More
