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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."
Bought a HD Homerun that supported Cablecard. Installed that in the basement and use the Nexus Players in the bedrooms and the Living room to watch TV. The MythTV server in the basement records and the shows appear in the PLEX list. Works fantastic.
Plus My way the recordings are not encrypted and kept locked away from me, so when I fly out to a customer's job I simply load what I want on my laptop and I have them in HD glory. I'm too cheap to pay for Plex Pass so I cant stream to my phone across the internet.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You've clearly never used their set top boxes. They're not spending any meaningful amount of money on those, trust me. They're terrible. Changing channels should never take more than 8 seconds. Or 1 second, for that matter.
DRINK
Here's to "It's already clear he'll be better than the next President."
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
In a related development, Roku TV and Samsung Smart TVs have integrated a Comcast set-top box into the TV set....
I wonder, was the FIOS/Samsung partnership broken by not working, or by Comcast's checkbook?
Set-top boxes were built too-soon by companies hoping Digital Cable would have been more popular. Therefore, most have low-end chips that were high-priced back then, now they're obsolete leading to the unacceptable performance.
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!”
Will there be outlet / mirroring fees?
DVR modes locked out
missing
local channels
local RSN's
local RSN alts
other channels
PPV events
MLB EI
NBA LP
NHL CI
VOD
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.
seeing as how they were about to be forced to do it at gun point.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Because this was never about Obama sticking it to the cable companies - This was about Obama overriding regulations to let comcast and time warner become de-facto internet content controllers.
Sorry, you only get half credit. You did manage to pull the Obama reference out of your ass; but you forgot to work in something about SJWs.
#DeleteChrome
I live in Seattle, have Comcast and their Xfinity App streams the channels like shit. Some shows I would be unable to watch because it would keep dying out. And this is using a decent Comcast internet connection. Going thru the web was usually a bit better, but not much.
All in all, and a Comcast customer, I would not recommend using the Xfinity app, i would recommend using usenet service or torrent sites if you want to watch quality versions of the show.
Be seeing you...
That won't work because this is a textbook example of a natural monopoly: almost all their costs are fixed (maintaining infrastructure) and the marginal cost per customer is basically zilch. (You turning on the TV costs them almost nothing.) Even without a government-granted monopoly, their monopoly status would happen naturally.
Why is it a natural monopoly? Suppose you had two different companies, each with their own cables running down your street. The two CEOs would look at eachother and say: why are we wasting all this money maintaining two sets of cables. We should just merge, maintain just one set of cables (saving money in the process), and become a monopoly to boot! (Exercise for the reader: understand why not all situations lead to natural monopolies. E.g. why do we not have natural monopolies in grocery stores?)
That might sound silly, but that's basically what we have now. Many houses have access to only two internet providers: the phone company and the cable company. Since TV signals are digital nowadays, they often offer the same services. The only thing keeping cable and phone companies from merging is government regulation.
What's the best solution? I'm not sure, but taking away their monopoly status will not foster competition on it's own. In my area, it would just lead to an ATT-Charter merger, which sounds horrible...
Comcast has a internal "Darling" division called VIPER (Video over IP Engineer & Research) already working on the possibilities of eliminating the set top box. They have known trouble has been brewing on this front for awhile now.
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...
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.