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Comcast's New 'Xfinity Instant TV' Streaming Service Charges $18 For What Antennas Offer For Free (exstreamist.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Exstreamist: Comcast announced this week that they plan on rolling out their streaming service, "Xfinity Instant TV" as an option for broadband-only customers. At our very first glance, it seemed like a pretty good deal, a live-streaming service for $18 a month, not bad right? But once we actually looked into the offering, we noticed something funny. Almost the entirety of what they're planning on charging $18 a month for could be viewed free with an antenna. According to the Wall Street Journal, the antenna as an option is apparently a long lost TV option for many consumers. Variety is reporting, "Xfinity Instant TV" intro packages, the ones that are $18, will only include a handful of broadcast channels, and a few "freebies" like the Home Shopping Network, and CSPAN So we're not exactly talking about getting access to ESPN, CNN, FX, or other more desirable channels for cord cutters, those will cost you at least $45 more a month, so basically the cost of your current cable television package. The report notes that the service is only available to Comcast internet subscribers and does include access to on-demand services.
Some people live in low-lying areas and can't get a signal, and HOA rules, or the nature of the type of dwelling (apartment, rental house), prevents them from putting up an antenna in a way that gets around those issues.
...as long as you're carrying an antenna and a TV around with you.
Instant TV offers streaming live TV via IP, including native mobile apps. You could certainly replicate this level of mobility with an antenna, but it would be a little cumbersome to cart around :-)
Unlike 1971, in 2017 most people actually live in cities and they get high quality 1080p HDTV over the air signals.
Inside of buildings.
It is specifically because people are waking up to this, and only need high speed Internet, that cable companies are losing customers fast.
If I could get a good CBC HDTV signal, I'd do the same.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
As I watch a football game legally on Amazon over Comcast for $100 per year plus free shipping on purchases.
I mean which is the greedier public menace really? The greed, or the greed that enables it?
Now, how do I connect this antenna to my phone?
You can just plug an antenna in any TV! Do people not know this?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It can't go wrong! It can sell free over the air tv to people who are restricted or banned from mounting an antenna to get free over-the-air HD TV content. Booyah Xfinity.. maybe your attempt will stick better than Aereo.
https://www.lifewire.com/aereo-tv-viewing-service-overview-1847833
An HOA does not have the authority to block or prevent the installation of an antenna designed to receive television signals:
https://www.fcc.gov/media/over...
People, I think most of you are forgetting that by capturing the digital signal of local broadcasters being transmitted through the air, you are violating the law by obtaining the intellectual property of local and national broadcasters without licence or payment .
This is morally wrong, and Comcast has provided a way for you to view these transmissions while compensating the many artists and rights-holders for their work. Everyone has to survive and being paid for their work is only right. Don't you like to be paid for your work?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You can just plug an antenna in any TV!
Provided it's actually a TV. Many devices that are shaped like a TV and sold in the TV section, such as the Vizio E70-E3, are actually only monitors. They can display an HDMI signal or receive a Chromecast, and that's about it. The tuner is sold separately.
Installing your own antenna to receive OTA is extraordinarily expensive.
In shithole I live get 21 channels perfect picture counting all sub channels while ignoring religious only stations.
Dual tuner HD Home Run = $60
Two wire ace hardware dipole antenna = $6
$66 dollars buys me the ability to "stream" OTA from anywhere on my network .. HD.. perfect picture ... $0 monthly cost.
But then I couldn't be bothered to run coax to my TV... so streaming from HD home run was VERY expensive...an ODRIOD C2 with gigabit Ethernet, 2GB ram, 4k h265 hardware decoding cost me $50.
Then I wanted to record shows and watch them later. Installed free DVR software on a spare computer with some available disk space.
What about the TV guide subscription? EPG is also broadcast OTA... not as fancy as subscription based Internet sources but good enough for most purposes including of course automatic DVR recording.
Your all better off giving thousands of dollars a year to your local cable monopoly. Don't even think about going OTA. You'll regret it.
Devel0pm3nt model
It isn't free to them. They have to pay the networks to provide it to you.
It isn't free to them. They have to pay the networks to provide it to you.
And to put the blame for that where it belongs: it could be free to Comcast IF the network affiliates did not invoke their exemption to the must-carry rules and demand payment. You see, there is a law that says that cable operators must carry locally available broadcast signals (with certain limits on size, IIRC) without having to pay the broadcaster anything, UNLESS that broadcaster opts out. If they opt out, they can demand payment for retransmission rights.
Right now in my area Comcast is displaying a CG page for one of the network stations we used to get. That broadcaster has opted out of must-carry and is refusing to grant retransmission rights. Comcast claims they demand too much money; the broadcaster claims Comcast isn't offering enough.
And the irony of this is, it is the broadcasters who originally demanded the must-carry rules. They were afraid that cable would choose to carry a different source of the network material and exclude the local stations, or simply not carry a signal that most people could get OTA (freeing up a channel for some other programming). In the former situation, viewers would get the network programs with national or other-region advertising. In the latter, viewers would be less likely to switch from cable to OTA to get that channel. Both situations cost the broadcaster advertising revenue. For the channel that is currently a stationary graphic, they've lost all viewers and all ad revenues from this area, a lose-lose for them. Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, I think the phrase is.
OTA TV is on its way out anyhow.
Back in the early days when most people had 3-4 OTA channels and few people had cable, more than enough people were watching each network to fund their operations. However now that it's not uncommon for a show on a broadcast network to "go fractional" - that is, get a Nielsen rating below 1.0 - OTA is no longer sustainable. Ad revenue alone isn't enough, and on top of that you have the heavy costs of operating a 1 megawatt broadcasting antenna.
The broadcast networks are slowly transitioning over to cable-style paid networks, and this is the only reason they're surviving thus far. If they weren't receiving subscriber revenue from cable companies, they'd already be dead.
The future is not in free content. It may take broadcast networks another decade or more to get out of the OTA business, but the continuing balkanizaiton of TV viewers over dozens of networks guarantees that OTA will no longer be viable in the long-run.
Nope. Still not tired of winning.
This is technically true. It's also irrelevant: Cable companies started out as ways to make it easier to obtain TV stations that were difficult to get via an antenna, and it remains the base that the lowest tier on offer from cable companies are, essentially, the broadcast channels and a few self-funded channels like HSN.
If you look at the actual product, what they're offering is a base price of $18 (which only includes antenna channels and self funded), plus packages you can add to that of channels you might actually want. Most people would probably end up paying somewhere between Sling TV (about $45 for a full set of channels) and what they'd pay for a normal cable subscription (quite a bit more than $45.)
So the price structure is the same as regular cable. It's just a little cheaper.
The service includes a virtual DVR. And you can use it with a Roku. You can use two devices simultaneously.
It doesn't seem to be bad or overpriced from what I'm looking at.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Comcast is weird, you need to stay on top of it and jump between promotional plans none of which have contracts. I only want internet, I added this and my bill went down $30. It wasn't mentioned in the article but they also severely limit what you can view if you aren't on your "home WiFi". And by home WiFi they mean home network, a VPN bypasses this limitation.
Overall the application works just fine, and they threw in HBO as well.
For example, I regularly get snail mail from Cox Communications asking me to re-up for Contour service. Sure it's only $15 but I know that it's just going to go up from there. They've done it before, they'll do it again.
I cut the cord years ago, and I've experimented with various computer-as-a-DVR and network DVR devices. (Elgato EyeTV on a Mac, Windows Media Center on Windows 7, Tablo, and now HDHomerun.) They are all very expensive, and they are all a pain to use. HDHomerun's DVR software is extremely stable and easy to use, but it's still rather feature incomplete. I don't think Silicon Dust has enough cashflow to make HDHomerun's DVR a complete device.
For the money I've spent on bad devices, $18 a month is a great deal, especially if the software works and is easy to use. No one in my household could figure out the Tablo. I used the Elgato EyeTV when I was single, and its interface was so awful that it basically required the user to write SQL queries in order to program the DVR.
I will say this, though: 20 hours of recording space is extremely small unless the controls are good. I like to DVR the news and occasionally watch the headlines, but that often requires dedicating 5 hours of space for yesterday's and today's broadcasts.
No, I will not work for your startup
Comcast offered this before for less $ with more stations. About a year ago they did a trial in Illinois for $15 a month. Same station line-up, plus it included HBO. Now it costs $3 more without HBO. We only used it for a couple of months to watch Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones. Once their seasons ended, we dropped it. Still more content available to watch than we have time for on youtube, netflix, amazon. PBS is the only thing we can get with an indoor antenna.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Is that thanks to Sony vs Betamax, it's legal to record OTA TV with a DVR.
Bet that's not true for the same material transmitted any other way, such as cable.
At our very first glance, it seemed like a pretty good deal
What are they smoking? At first glance, it looked like a terrible deal.
OTA TV is based on RF signals. Traditional cable is based on QAM signal transmission. Newer cable and streaming services use a regular IP network connection. If you're in an area that has poor RF reception, these should provide a significant quality increase since they're using an IP network connection. It would be great if it were free like RF, but someone has to pay the bandwidth and infrastructure bills.
Local Off Air charge as much as $1 a month per channel to the cable operator! Hence why you are seeing the bill. The rise in cable bills comes from the cost of content. As everyone cuts the cord, content providers increase cost to cover lost revenue. Who owns all the content?
General Electric
Time Warner
Walt Disney
News Corporation
CBS
Viacom
Ok...so here's the thing.
Cable companies have been paying retransmission fees for OTA channels since the mid 90s. The difference is they used to roll it in to your service package and hide this from you. They are no longer allowed to do that; and if you look at your bill, you should see a "local channel fee".
Aereo was not paying fees; they were arguing they were effectively acting as just a remote antenna and tuner.
This Xfinity service and Aereo are the same thing in some aspects; except XFinity has paid for the ability to sell the service. Aereo was shut down because it was ruled they were violating these rules.
Also, no one is restricted from being able to put up an antenna to get OTA TV. The FCC has laws protecting these devices and only in specific extreme cases (like you live in an apartment) can they be violated.
I think it might depend on the area. Last time I ran the TV through "setup" it picked up 17 channels OTA. Of course, most are crap, but besides the networks there are a few specialist channels (the oldies channel, horror channel scifi channel (which is not the syfy channel)) which you'd think would be cable channels but are available OTA. We don't have cable at all, haven't for years. If we can't get it OTA, we largely do without. (Caveat: I don't watch much TV, so YMMV. And wife does have Hulu on her Kindle, which is admittedly a cable-style paid network.) We currently only have two connections to the outside world -- a big "farmhouse style" antenna on the roof, and fiber internet to the house (internet only, no TV) and there's a blu-ray player attached to the TV. It works for us. (What works for me in particular is that my cost for TV after initial investment is basically zero. Previously it was something like $160 a month.)
Personally, I don't think those transmitters will go away in the immediate future. They may get repurposed somehow.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.