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…
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Now hopefully FiOS follows suit. Literally no reason not to out Android app on tv
Well, Dave, you know Verizon is reportedly working on an all-IP video service to roll out this year. (Possibly replacing the existing FiOS TV service? Why else? Doesn't make sense to offer QAM and managed IP TV on the same network if bandwidth is any concern at all.) The tunerless STB for it has rolled through the FCC already:
http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/verizon-ip-tv-service-set-top-box-1201754543/
Why Verizon would want to withhold this new service from consumer-owned STBs that are capable of delivering a secure, smooth experience for the viewer is beyond me. (As you speculate for Comcast above, Verizon could require some sort of additional hardware gateway accessory as the service wouldn't be OTT on the open internet but on their managed, secure network -- sorry, no password sharing!) I could certainly see both Verizon and Comcast providing apps for their IP-based services to Roku and Android TV. (The Nvidia Shield that Comcast demo'd in your story is a high-end Android TV box.) As Roku's CEO recently remarked, those two OSes are the future of smart TV app platforms. And the native Live Channels app in Android TV is ready and waiting to re-create the traditional cable box channel program grid for the world of live streaming. It even gains DVR capabilities in this year's update...
Oh, I'm sure Verizon would want to offer it. They're just slower, with fewer resources for development and less negotiating power with content providers. Maybe I'll go ahead blog the IP STB... they didn't actually launch in 2014. This has been a long time coming.
Regarding Roku and thinking out a couple years, I hope they're working on updating their underlying platform as Android or to support Android apps...