Good news if you’re a Comcast subscriber and you’ve been looking into their High-Speed 2go product. Comcast just announced that they’ve picked Novatel as the provider for the USB modems used in their mobile broadband service. → Read More
Now why would a cable company that handles pay per view movies and programming team up with a video store? I have no idea. But for whatever reason (perhaps desperation?) Comcast has joined forces with Blockbuster to deliver DVDs by mail. You’d think Comcast would just deliver the content via their high speed internet feeds, or receiver based delivery systems. Perhaps this is just a marketing… → Read More
In May at TechCrunch Disrupt, we got our first look at Tunerfish, a Comcast-owned service that asks users the question, “What are you watching?”. Today, the app is headed to the iPhone — you can download the free application here.
The gist of the application is simple: instead of aimless channel surfing, which often yields lackluster results, Tunerfish lets you see what your friends are… → Read More
Everyone is busy talking about Microsoft Kinect (the project formerly known as Natal), but to me, some much bigger news just dropped at E3 from Microsoft: ESPN live sports access. Simply put: this was the only thing holding me back from completely canceling my cable subscription. As soon as this goes live, I’m done with cable forever.
No, this live sporting access won’t be entirely free, but it’s… → Read More
Comcast’s Tunerfish is opening to the public today; and debuting a deal with HBO for their show True Blood. Tunerfish, which was demoed at TechCrunch Disrupt a few weeks ago, was incubated by the Plaxo team (Comcast acquired Plaxo in 2008) and is led by former Plaxo VP of Marketing John McCrea.
Tunerfish allows people to share with a single click what they are watching, on their social… → Read More
We told you Comcast was introducing something fresh and exciting at TechCrunch Disrupt this year. Say hello to Tunerfish, incubated by the Plaxo team (Comcast acquired Plaxo in 2008) and led by former Plaxo VP of Marketing John McCrea.
Tunerfish is driven by people’s passion for TV shows, and revolves around the ability for people to share what they are watching in real time. Launching in the… → Read More
I may not always have the nicest things to say about Comcast, but I try to take it case by case. Today, they’re doing a good thing: this iPad app looks nice. Not particularly creative, but creative isn’t what Joe Six-Pack wants when he’s just trying to find Top Chef. → Read More
Comcast, America’s worst company, just announced that it will have indeed have ESPN 3D in time for this year’s World Cup. Comcast is the first cable provider to commit to carrying the network (while DirecTV announced the same thing several weeks ago). → Read More
We always keep the list of launching startups and products at our big events strictly confidential until the day of launch. But we’re finalizing the list of launching companies at TechCrunch Disrupt this week, and we usually give out a single teaser prior to the event. We’re excited that Comcast will be launching a new product called Tunerfish on May 24 in New York at Disrupt.
What’s Tunerfish? → Read More
The FCC acknowledged on their official blog today that the court’s decision on the Comcast deal could hamper their national broadband plan. General Counsel of the FCC, Austin Schlick says that the court’s ruling that the FCC does not have the authority to enforce net neutrality was an “important ruling.”
“It undermines the legal approach the FCC adopted in 2005 to fulfill its statutory duty of… → Read More
This morning, the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dealt the FCC a major blow in its drive to impose net neutrality on the nation’s broadband providers. A panel of three judges ruled that the FCC did not have the authority to order Comcast to stop slowing down BitTorrent traffic, and, more, broadly, that the FCC does not have the authority to enforce net neutrality.
The case… → Read More
Looks like nobody in the TV industry wants the NBCU-Comcast merger to go down. And who could blame them! ABC, CBS, and Fox affiliates are afraid that, if the merger goes down, it’ll cause the clouds to darken and the streets to run red with the blood of something or other. Basically, they’re scared that the merger will put the in a very bad position indeed. → Read More
The pending $30 billion merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal is going to complicate things for Hulu, the second most popular online video site after YouTube. Hulu is a joint venture between NBC, News Corp/Fox, and (since last year) Disney/ABC. It was created by the TV networks as a counterweight to YouTube, a safe place where they could run their full-length TV shows online with their own… → Read More
Amen, Verizon. Amen. Read this bit from Verizon’s statement on 3D. Verizon’s network can easily handle the 3D signal, and we are committed to having a 3D offering later this year, surely in time for the holiday tech buying season, when the penetration of 3D-ready sets increases. Just as we did with HD, we’ll bring the broadest range of 3D possible to the market supported by the best… → Read More
Kudos to Comcast for embracing the year 2009. The nation’s largest—and quite possibly worst—ISP has finally committed itself to deploying 100 mbps broadband beginning this year. That will make the FCC happy, what with the loft goals it set with its National Broadband Plan. It’s also good news for people who know their way around things like Usenet—taps nose like a spy. Will it… → Read More
A couple weeks ago, we noted the city of Topeka, Kansas’ humorous attempt to get Google’s attention: by rebranding their city “Google, Kansas.” Why would they do such a thing? Because they want in on Google’s fiber action — the search giant’s proposed plan to sell 1 gigabit-per-second broadband to consumers. Now Baltimore, Maryland is getting in on the fun as well.
The city has appointed a… → Read More
It’s one thing to hack your cable modem for your own personal edification, but it’s another matter to turn around and sell hacked cable modems to people. I mean, that’s just common sense, right? Smoke all the dope you want, just don’t sell it to kids on the street. (You’ll note I used the word “dope” like a 70-year-old man.) Some guy in Massachusetts found out the hard way, and he now faces up to… → Read More
I’m just going to take it. That’s right, Comcast. This is me, waving my white flag. I’m not going to complain to you any more. Why did I even try in the first place? It’s like trying to erode Mount Rainier with licks. So from here on out, I’m just going to take it. All the outages, all the fees, all 20 levels of customer service. Who was I kidding, anyway? → Read More
Comcast announced this morning that it has appointed Neil Smit as the new President of Comcast Cable Communications. In his new role, Smit will be responsible for all business aspects of the company’s cable operations. He will report to Comcast COO Steve Burke.
Neil Smit joins Comcast from Charter Communications, where he served as CEO and Director for the past 4 years. Prior to joining… → Read More
Comcast is in discussions with partners to offer a music streaming service to its customers as an à la carte offering, we’ve heard from multiple sources. For an additional monthly charge of $5 or more, users will be able to stream on demand music online via a website and on their TV via their cable box.
For the last 18 months a Danish ISP called TDC has been offering customers in that country… → Read More
Some people don’t like Comcast and Time Warner’s TV Everywhere plan to bring cable TV to the Web. They are just paranoid.
Allow me to explain. In his 1964 Harper’s Magazine essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter argued that American politics has often been a stage for excessively conspiratorial and suspicious minds from both the… → Read More
Do you have a Comcast DVR? I do. I also have a TiVo, which has had remote scheduling since 2005. I can almost schedule recordings remotely to my Comcast DVR. Not yet, but almost – it’s not available in Boston yet, apparently. If you have a Comcast DVR, check out http://www.comcast.net/mydvr/ to see if the service has been switched on in your area. → Read More
Whoever says the legal system in this country is broken, well, you’re right. Comcast was caught tampering with its customers’ packets two years ago. It bitched and moaned like nobody’s business, earning itself no friends. The Federal Communications Commission sanctioned the gigantic corporation in what amounted to a slap on the wrist. Big deal. A class action lawsuit was filed, which was just… → Read More
Comcast and General Electric announced early this morning that they agreed to form a joint venture that will be 51 percent owned by Comcast and 49 percent by GE. The joint venture, which will consist of the NBC Universal businesses and Comcast’s cable networks, regional sports networks and more, will be managed by the newly formed Comcast Entertainment Group (CEG).
GE will contribute to the… → Read More
I just had a visit from a courteous and helpful (really) Comcast guy that was quite illuminating. You see, a few months ago I had a new cable modem installed, since my old one was freezing up every few minutes. The guy who came then happened to have an extra modem in his van of the correct spec and installed it right away. Everything was fine until a week or two ago, when I started losing… → Read More
Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks (to name a few) continue to bet big on Clearwire’s WiMAX nationwide wireless network. The foursome have just pumped an additional $1.494 billion into Clearwire’s coffer, with another $50 million coming from Intel and $20 million from Eagle River Holdings. CHA-CHING. → Read More
Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts spoke on stage with Federated Media’s John Battelle. For the first part of the discussion, they talked about the usual stuff: the state of the industry, competition, and the like. The answers were pretty PR-friendly, as you’d expect. But a bit of a surprise came with Battelle asked about the role Twitter is playing with the… → Read More
About a year ago, I had enough. I was so sick of putting up with Comcast’s ridiculous rates for terrible service that I decided to cancel everything but the Internet. Truth be told, I kept basic cable only because it was cheaper to keep it with my Internet package then to not keep it. But I never watched it. For all intents and purposes I was cable-free. Most importantly, that meant removing the… → Read More
My God in Heaven! It’s been about four hours since the FCC announced its intention to add two more pillars to its idea of Net Neutrality: one, ISPs should not be allowed to wily nilly permit/disallow traffic on their networks (non-discrimination); and two, traffic management should be done is as transparent a manner as possible, so you don’t wind up with people discovering that their software is… → Read More
Yesterday, cable behemoth, Comcast, announced plans to make its emerging On Demand Online service available to cable subscribers on their mobile devices in the near future. → Read More
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Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
