While the FCC’s flawed Unlock the Box proposal will be subject to various challenges and any potential implementation is years away, Comcast’s fortunately moving forward with their own solutions. And, from the cable industry’s annual trade event this week, they unveiled Xfinity apps for Roku, Nvidia Shield, and Samsung televisions. It’s early days yet and these “alpha” experiences are likely months from deployment… as not only will they provide live and on-demand cable television, but they’ll also link into an upcoming cloud DVR service. Cool, right?
In talking to Multichannel’s Jeff Baumgartner, he suspects that this IP-based service could require an in-home gateway device of some sort and that usage won’t be subject to Comcast broadband data caps as the video wouldn’t be flowing over the “public” Internet.
I sure hope Verizon is working on something similar for FiOS TV, as I’d love to use my Roku, Fire TV, or Apple TV as my cable box (without waiting around for any possible government regulation). If not, well, my home is also pre-wired for Comcast and their new 1TB broadband cap isn’t too shabby…