Charter had been looking to tie up the country’s second largest cable operator, but #1 Comcast has swooped in with a $45 billion agreement to acquire Time Warner Cable. The deal will be closely scrutinized by federal regulators, but at least one pundit expects minimal push back given their largely distinct areas of operation. However, that simplistic analysis overlooks Comcast’s identity as a media entity along with dramatically increased negotiating power when it comes to retransmission and licensing (in both directions). Further, Public Knowledge has concerns in relation to such a large percent of Americas relying on a single entity for their voice and data services. Having said all that, TWC isn’t a great cable company for TiVo owners and a Comcast infrastructure would be a significant improvement. Assuming we’re still using TiVo after the years required to close the deal, remove the punitive content restrictions, and retrofit those head-ends.
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And I was just thinking yesterday as I headed out of town ahead of the big snow storm that Comcast's iOS app is far superior to Verizon's with those show downloads.
I don't see this making a difference to retail TiVo owners in TWC or Comcast areas. It's probably good for TiVo in that Charter would've probably used TWC's ODN/Navigator and now they are fully going to have to buy something in the marketplace. However, for TWC customers removing the CCI byte restrictions seems like something that would get overlooked and fall through the cracks and just remain disjointed between former TWC systems on a regional basis.
"TWC isn’t a great cable company for TiVo owners"
But, OTOH, Comcast isn't a great cable company for Roku owners.
Not to mention that Comcast has been by far the most aggressive major ISP in using the peering loophole to severely throttle 3rd party OTT video. And that was prior to the recent anti-Net Neutrality court ruling making such throttling fully above-board. One would expect Comcast to become even more aggressive against 3rd party OTT video in the Brave New World.
So, this might be a minor win for TiVo users looking to stream outside the LAN, but I think it's probably a far more major overall loss for video consumers. (In the non-existent world where I had a binary choice between Comcast and TWC as my wireline provider, I'd easily choose TWC...)