Comcast To Allow TV Customers To Ditch Set-Top Box (usatoday.com) 113
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."
"Some" of its customers...??? (Score:1)
Why not all???
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DRINK
Re:"Some" of its customers...??? (Score:5, Funny)
DRINK
Here's to "It's already clear he'll be better than the next President."
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I think you mean, "she".
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Did Obama get a sex change? I must have missed that in all the news recently.
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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 color
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What? The deficit was almost 100% from the Bush era tax cuts (Republican policy) and waging two wars (neo-Con Republican policy).
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What? The deficit was almost 100% from the Bush era tax cuts (Republican policy) and waging two wars (neo-Con Republican policy).
That's part of the strategy. Declare war as a economic stimulus package, and through the magic of emergency appropriations, move the payback to another administration.
Which for all of the dehumanizing of Democrats, all of the hardly veiled racist hatred of the Kenyan terror baby, What happened from 2008 to now is amazing.
The real estate meltdown, the credit card debacle, coupled with the two front war, waged on the layaway plan, and payoff day arriving - and we were poised to make the 1930's look like good times for all. It took smart, cool heads to avoid a US led greater depression.
I'm no Democrat, but I give credit where credit is due.
Only in slashdot world, can a person present actual history, and be called a troll
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You do realize that the recession was caused by deregulation passed by Clinton don't you? Removal of regulations put in place for exactly the reason the recession happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But that is ok, feel free to partisanly blame Bush for Clinton's failure.
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I'm still hopeful.
It took a Jimmy Carter to get a Ronald Reagan.
Fingers crossed....
A hundred years from now, your statement will be considered the exact opposite of what you mean.
ahhhh... it brings back memories of being in a McDonalds, probably 2005 and Fox News was on the TV. They had a panel discussoin about how G.W. Bush was probably the best president of all time.
Re:"Some" of its customers...??? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Why not all???
If you want fancier service they will want to control the hardware so that they can stream ads at you, better track your viewing, maybe deliver nonstandard signals, etc...
If you want basic service the only point of the set top box is to increase your cable bill and then WAY overcharge you if it doesn't get returned when you disconnect service.
If their move is in favor of consumers generally, they will discontinue the need to have a box with basic service. These are probably the people most likely to leave
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the most likely reason its only some customers is a general small roll out to check for quality issues before loading up millions on a stream of something rather than going through the normal channels (pun intended)
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Because this is a test phase. After all they want to be sure that no one can get their service for free. They did say this is a trial so it may eventually become available for everyone, but they still expect most customers will continue to use set-top boxes.
Also take note that the service isn't going to be tied to only people having Comcast as their ISP so they hope to take customers away from other cable companies by allowing them to use their application to watch Comcast TV even though they are using XYZ
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I wonder, was the FIOS/Samsung partnership broken by not working, or by Comcast's checkbook?
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And THAT is why the right to choice in how subscribers access programming must be required by regulations instead of relying on the kindness of pay-TV providers.
I don't see why. If you don't like the (crappy) terms or requirements for viewing some programming, you don't have to subscribe to it. You don't *need* to watch cable TV, so if it's too expensive or too much of a PITA because you have to use special equipment, then don't. It's not like internet service, which is a communications service which has
I did this a year ago. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I did this a year ago. (Score:4, Interesting)
The only not-fantastic part of the problem is that HD View cannot keep up with HD content on either of my PCs, and SiliconDust dropped support for HD Quick TV. I'm now using VLC which seems able to keep up.
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Because this has nothing to do with CableCards?
That's right. They would have allowed me to turn in my set-top box whether or not I was getting a cableCARD, and that was years ago. Allowing "some customers" to "ditch" their STB is not news.
Nor is the fact that Comcast will allow customers to watch content online. I've had the Xfinity app for a long time. And over the net. The fact that Xfinity content can be viewed online is not news.
Cablecard fees (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're still paying an extra monthly fee for the cablecard. There is no difference.
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My cablecard is free. Isn't everyone's? ISP: comcast.
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$3 on FiOS TV. Also, this is a 6 tuner card I have in my Roamio.
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2. If you've never used a cable card, then you wouldn't realize that yes, there is a difference.
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Why are you paying for a cablecard fee? Cablecards are free unless you ask for 3 or more of them.
your cable company must really suck compared to Comcast as the first two are free with them.
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You do realize that Comcast changes the terms based on what city you live in correct?
For me Comcast charges $170 a month for their triple play package and 25mb internet. if you want faster internet you pay another $30 a month.
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FCC rule requires a "reasonable" number of cablecards to be free.
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From what I read there, Verizon is still correct. The STB rental is $12, the CableCard rental is $3, they discount your plan by the $12/mo if you don't use a STB anymore.
I still have to return my STB at some point, it is just gathering dust.
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Back when I involuntarily* had cable, I accepted only the single "free" SD cable box. Then I got an HD HomeRun and when I traded in the "free" box for a CableCard, suddenly an extra credit appeared on my bill. Perhaps you're right that even the CableCard isn't free, but it's certainly the closest Comcast will let you get without further FCC intervention.
(* Comcast wanted to charge me more for Internet by itself than for Internet + basic TV that year)
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I took a different approach. I installed a playon server. Pointed it at free streams from CBS, NBC, etc as well as paid streams like Hulu and have it make them available on demand via my roku devices. Plus for shows that are of limited availability or commercial overflowed I have the playon server record the episode and play it back at my convince.
So my cable bill has been reduced to a HBO, Hulu, Free streaming from the networks, and amazon prime subscriptions (I'd have amazon prime either way though).
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You don't need Plex Pass to stream content from your Plex server to your phone. I do it all the time. All you have to do is forward the port (32400? I forget now) the Plex server uses. I have a DynDNS domain that I use to directly access my server, but if you don't want to go through that, you can go to the Plex web page, log in, and it provides a link to your server. :)
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I really like my SiliconDust tuner. I've used it for many years with Windows Media Center, but I've recently started hooking up other devices (Kodi on Raspberry PI and Fire TV stick).
Unfortunately, their DVR software is still a work in progress, so most of the recording is still done by WMC. You may be having better luck with Nexus Players, though. The View client for Android is ahead of all the others. That only works on my 7" phone. I think they're mostly working on the Windows 10 client right now.
Not
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Plex is much like Kodi (as far as I have read about Kodi), it allows streaming of video to whatever device, and it on the fly transcodes video for each device so it receives its optimal resolution/bitrate/codec. It may be that your QNAP doesn't have the horsepower for the on the fly transcoding, I know my Synology rack mount SAN/NAS did not, and actually crashed trying to do it. I run Plex on my file server, which used to point to the NAS, and now points to local drives as I have decommissioned the Synolo
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Kodi doesn't have any kind of server component - it's just a client. It can play from content from file shares, DLNA, and other sources. SiliconDust has a Kodi plug-in that plays Live TV from the HDHomeRun tuner, and recorded content from where ever that's set up on the local network. Pretty handy. Kodi doesn't do any transcoding.
For MCE content, I use MCEBuddy to transcode the MCE recordings into mpeg4, and I can point Kodi to that file share. It plays those files very nicely, even over Wifi.
I think yo
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I understand the feeling on the SiliconDust stuff, I used to have a triple tuner cable card unit from them (and a dual antenna one before that), but when MS dropped Media Center, I went out and bought a Tivo to do the same things I was doing on the computer. MCEBuddy works pretty well with Tivos too, the only thing is automating the retrieval from the Tivo, which can be done with other software. For some reason MCEBuddy is a little flakey with Tivo recordings, but when it works, it works really well.
The n
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I've never paid for Plex Pass either, but streaming works like a champ for me on my phone and my Chromebook (the latter just uses the web interface).
What phone are you using? Plex apps for Android and (I think) iOS are free, but they're charging (via Plex Pass) for the Windows app. Then again, the web app works pretty much the same on Windows devices as it does on Chromebooks (just tested it on an HP Stream 7 to verify),
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Re:Nothing new to the customer (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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STBs never cost much to make. Even high-end HDVRs are nothing more than crippled PCs running limited OSes. Cable companies charge the best part of $20/month (inc taxes) to rent a box that costs about $80 to build. Hold your head in shame for fabricating costs and defending this shady scam. Furthermore, the same tech is used elsewhere in the world and is yours after just one year of a contract.
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The mistake is that the cable companies paid hundreds of dollars for each box that now is woth $80.
Want a good STB? Get a TiVo that was manufactured recently. Those have plenty of margin on them, because all of the other competition seems to have folded.
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Wrong. Set tops are fucking expensive at scale ($100-250, average of 2.5 per US home). They also have to decrypt each digital stream, hence part of the delay when changing channels - everything is digital now.
Source - IPTV provider
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Re: Nothing new to the customer (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
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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...
Well, yes - those were an entirely different ballgame. In the 80's, we were still dealing with analog cable, meaning that all the box had to wait for was a vertical sync pulse, of which it got 60/sec. Now that we've gone digital, and we're running MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 streams everywhere, the boxes need to wait for a complete I-frame before they can display...which may involve some form of decryption and a number of other factors.
The old boxes were much better, because they were much simpler.
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I'm pretty sure that in the worst-case, ATSC MPEG-2 frames have at least one I-frame per 15 frames, so the total latency should still be well under a half-second per channel EVEN IF you had to wait 1/4 second for an I-frame, then spend another 1/60th of a second analyzing it and another 1/60th of a second outputting it to the display. If switching between a 720p60 and 1080i60 channel, maybe add another 1/15th of a second of delay (assuming the box can't transmit the resolution/framerate metadata with each f
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Integrated... (Score:3)
In a related development, Roku TV and Samsung Smart TVs have integrated a Comcast set-top box into the TV set....
Here's a brain fart for ya (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of regulation, why not just take away their monopoly status and all other exclusive contracts that block the competition?
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The corrupt local/municipal/state authorities grant and protect the monopolies. That's why we need to call in the Calvary to pry open the market.
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The corrupt local/municipal/state authorities grant and protect the monopolies.
No, they don't. The franchises are non-exclusive. That's not a monopoly. You want to meed the standards of the franchise ordinances, you can get a franchise, too.
The only monopoly involved is the defacto one created by economic realities. You can't legislate that monopoly away.
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economic realities
Yes, the economic realities of kickbacks [wired.com]... how to make a monopoly not look like a monopoly...
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The franchises are non-exclusive
Eh? The VAST majority of franchise agreements in Ohio were exclusives for a class of service (ie phone vs cable) until the state of Ohio passed a universal franchise law at the behest of AT&T and Verizon which wanted to offer triple play bundles. I happen to use an overlay cable provider (W.O.W) because my community was one of the few without an exclusive franchise agreement and let me tell you, competition works, $25/month for 30/5 internet with no caps.
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Eh? The VAST majority of franchise agreements in Ohio were exclusives for a class of service (ie phone vs cable)
I have yet to see an exclusive cable franchise, despite asking for links to one every time this discussion about "monopolies" comes up. Yes, the phone companies have exclusive franchises based on a long history, but every cable franchise I've seen has been explicitly non-exclusive.
You are talking about your internet service, which is not the same as a cable franchise. I know of no ISP franchises, and there are plenty of ISPs. I have at least two choices for ISP using DSL, for example.
The delivery system i
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I have yet to see an exclusive cable franchise, despite asking for links to one every time this discussion about "monopolies" comes up
I believe the one I provided sums it up pretty well. Cable, phone, internet, let's not pick nits. Communications is a heavily protected industry.
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Yeah, and they really aren't competing against each other as much as they are fixing prices. It's kind of an old "Standard Oil" thing.
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I have no anger against the companies. They only do what comes naturally, whatever they can get away with. It is the government that protects them from the consumers, and to cut to the chase, it is the consumers that vote for that government, and that is where my "anger" is always directed. People are just too mousy and submissive in the face of authority. The push back is insufficient. I only want to open the market to competition. Comcast, Disney ABC, NBC Universal, Viacom all share ownership in each othe
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I bet AT&T may disagree.
Because it's a natural monopoly (Score:4, Interesting)
That won't work because this is a textbook example of a natural monopoly [wikipedia.org]: 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...
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All monopolies require state protection.
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All monopolies require state protection.
...Never heard of Standard Oil I take it? Or U.S. Steel?
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Yes, they needed the government to lock out the competition and back up their anti union activities. And without the "Pnks" (Pinkertons, basically a private government agency) and the regular police and their guns, they would be no bigger than anybody else.
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All monopolies require state protection.
[citation needed]
Re:Because it's a natural monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Because it's a natural monopoly (Score:4, Funny)
What's the best solution?
Nationalizing all infrastructure that is critical to society.
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Why was that modded down? That is precisely what is needed. The state builds and maintains the infrastructure and leases it without prejudice. Freedom of choice will then sort out the chaff.
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Not sure why this still applies. If I have a Roku box, why not pay Comcast and get the Xfinity app to watch TV even though I live in a Time Warner region? Cable cutting taken full circle virtually?
Not that I would while they're bundling,
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The solution is to separate content from delivery.
The cables( or fiber) should be a regulated monopoly the same way water, sewer, electricity is. They should be content agnostic. But unfortunately that would be efficient and make sense.
Will there be outlet / mirroring fees? missing cha (Score:3)
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
Not an improvement (Score:1)
They'll still find a way to screw you. (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
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That'sa pretty good deal, I've got a better one (Score:1)
How about I give you the finger, and you give me my phone call.
Look at the fear! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
That's mighty nice of 'em (Score:3)
Xfinity App streams like shit (Score:3)
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.
Comcast has been already working on this (Score:2)
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.
Multicast? (Score:2)
I could go one about this stuff, but to make it short, I am surprised that they would want customers to stream everything to boxes that most likely are not able to do multicast stream joins. Current cable technologies like SDV do something similar to IP multicast streams being joined at the edge, just in a really bad way using new QAM frequencies per stream, but if they just used settop boxes that did IP multicast joins directly to the network it would way be better and still save tons of bandwidth.
Most peo
Wait til you use up your bandwidth cap (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Why not TiVo? (Score:1)
I had Comcast for past two years (I recently switched to AT&T) and didn't lease a set-top-box from Comcast: I have a TiVo Premiere and just rented a cable card from them. I have never had a Comcast DVR (been a TiVo owner since TiVo model 1), so I can't compare their features. But since I've always bought with lifetime subscriptions from TiVo, I've never been a renter. It works fine and even has a (crappy UI) working Xfinity on-demand app.
Do Not Want (Score:2)
They'll allow us! (Score:2)
They'll allow us! Are they not merciful??