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Comcast To Allow TV Customers To Ditch Set-Top Box (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In response to the FCC's efforts to open up the pay-TV set-top box market, Comcast said today it will allow some of its subscribers to watch TV without leasing a set-top box. Customers with a Roku TV, Roku streaming media player, or 2016 Samsung Smart TV will be able to watch Comcast's TV programming through the Xfinity TV app embedded in the TV set or Roku devices later this year. However, customers will still have to subscribe to a standard cable TV package from Comcast's Xfinity brand. "We remain committed to giving our customers more choice in how, when and where they access their subscription," said Mark Hess, a Comcast senior vice president, in a prepared statement. The FCC has responded to Comcast's recent announcement saying in a statement, "While we do not know all of the details of this announcement, it appears to offer only a proprietary, Comcast-controlled user interface and seems to allow only Comcast content on different devices, rather than allowing those devices to integrate or search across Comcast content as well as other content consumers subscribe to."
Instead of regulation, why not just take away their monopoly status and all other exclusive contracts that block the competition?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So you're still paying an extra monthly fee for the cablecard. There is no difference.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This is Comcast we are talking about. I'm sure watching the video counts towards your data cap.
Today I got a flyer for Comcast w/DVR for $89 month. Great! Right?
Actually let's see what the real price is. $89 base fee+$5 Broadcast TV Fee+$3 Regional Sports Free+$10 HD Technology Fee(what? you thought HD was included?)+$10 Cable Modem Free+Other taxes and fees. So really that $89 is actually $120 month plus tax. And after 1yr it's $130 month plus tax.
Comcast, "we charge 40-50% above our teaser rates because we can".
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Wow... you must've been shocked at Obama quadrupling the debt "Reagan" made, worst US recovery EVER. Unemployment not even calculable any more because they keep fudging their numbers. Billions still given to Wall Street and now talk of negative interest rates, not to mention the USSR buzzing our navy ships and building up troops in Syria while North Korea and Iran threaten us with nuclear weapons and numerous terrorist strikes on US soil redefined as "workplace violence"
You must've been wearing rose colored glasses the last 7 years.
The set top box rules have them scared. It took the cable companies nearly 10 years to shape cable card into a controlled non-open platform and the companies are scared that the new attempt by the FCC to open up cable access will actually succeed so Comcast is working preemptively to try to head off the rules again. Just like Cable card when they asked the FCC permission to build a certification lab that became the gateway to denying any device that didn't work exactly how the cable companies wanted and as poorly as possible to discourage their use they will use they independent contracts to ensure any non-set top method of access is both crappy and second rate.
I own Roku devices but I don't trust Comcast and I know without a doubt in my mind this is another attempt to undermine open access. With a Roku contract they can build a channel that is both second rate and crappy in every regard and then point to that and tell customers that's what they get when they don't rent a box. Roku being the sellouts they are will also allow Comcast to do this.
Don't cheer this, recognize it for what it is, an attempt to end run the open access provisions by letting Comcast write the rules, just like they did with cable card.
And that's because of stuff Republicans forced... but lets not talk about that... Lets give credit to Obama even though he fought spending cuts tooth and nail...
Pffft. I remember what Dish Network was like back in 2000... With their crap gear, changing channels took upwards of 5-15 seconds. It was LITERALLY impossible to channel-surf in any meaningful way.
Voom (circa 2003) was a million times better... High-quality high-end hardware that, if anything, was somewhat over-engineered (I think they were planning to make any box DVR-capable by plugging a hard drive into it, but shut down before they got around to it). Going from Voom to Comcast and their Motorola boxes was downright painful... Not quite as bad as Dish, but nowhere near as responsive and snappy as Voom. In 2008, my DirecTV HR-20(21?) was almost as good as Voom's boxes... until they changed the firmware around 2010, and almost overnight the box became glacially slow.
In retrospect, I think the fastest cable boxes I ever had were there Scientific Atlanta boxes from the late 80s/early 90s... Literally instant channel-changes. You could hold the channel up or down button, and let it rip through at least 2 or 3 channels per second. Sigh... Two steps forward, 1.97 steps back...
What does any of this have to do with TV? Keep the wires as either a municipal utility or a regulated regional monopoly with capped rates. Allow anyone interested to offer content or provide end user customer service on equal basis. Apps will be on every cheap smart TV and streaming box in no time and high value networks will be motivated to offer standalone services rather than subsidize unpopular channels.
Most of this can be done now with the Xfinity streaming video website, and of course some channels have Roku apps or stream on Youtube which has an app.
But there is one big problem with this: All of it uses your meager 300GB of Comcast bandwidth. Every stupid moment of it uses bandwidth.
Watching cable TV the old fashioned way with a set-top box does not use bandwidth. I can leave all the TVs in my house on whatever channel I want all month long and it won't use even one kilobyte.
But if I put NBCSports (only for F1) or QVC on my laptop or Roku, bam, I am gobbling up bandwidth like crazy. This happens even if I go somewhere else and use an Xfinity hotspot to watch. The system counts that bandwidth against your account.
Use too much bandwidth and you get to pay more for overages. Xfinity is gonna make bank "letting" people watch TV on their Roku boxes. How nice of them.
Now I could pay for unlimited bandwidth and my total Comcast bill would be about $130 and I could watch all the TV I want. OR I can keep it as it is, and have a nice TV package with a couple hundred channels, and pay $119. HMMM. Sure I only get 300GB that way but that's enough for my current use.
Sig for hire.