With the NBCU news drowning out other Comcast conversation, I thought I’d take this moment to tally up the gifts the MSO has promised to all the good little subscriber girls and boys this year. First and most important, TV Everywhere, er, On Demand Online, um, Xfinity is scheduled to roll out before the start of Hanukkah on December 12th. Yes, that’s right, Broadcasting and Cable has discovered that the new name for the Comcast service will be Xfinity. Actually it will be Fancast Xfinity TV, but you can call it Xfinity for short. If you’ve been following along with the story so far, the new Comcast offering will let subscribers to both television and broadband service access TV shows anywhere and everywhere from a Comcast portal site. Never again be without NCIS, NCIS LA, or the upcoming NCIS Louisville, NCIS Dubuque, or NCIS Stars Hollow.
Of course, if you want to watch a lot of TV online, you’ll need to keep track of your bandwidth usage. Comcast now has a bandwidth meter in trials that should roll out to all customers in Q1 of next year. We first heard about ISP bandwidth meters back when operators started testing bill-by-the-byte models in 2008. Now that Comcast has one coming to market (with an independent third-party company validating measurements), it will be interesting to see any aggregate data collected on consumer bandwidth usage. How much are we really using the interwebs? I’ll be curious to get a look at not only how online TV affects my personal bandwidth numbers, but also how Slacker usage, Squeezebox listening, and massive photo uploading impact my meter readings.
Finally, Comcast has promised that remote DVR scheduling is on the horizon. Granted the company’s been a bit busy of late, but I’ve been checking on the feature landing page and haven’t seen any changes to note from Dave’s original report. Then again, Comcast has probably been keeping tabs on whether we’ve been bad or good. If we all stay on the non-naughty list, maybe we’ll see remote DVR features by CES.
Hopefully, you’ll be getting some Mozy service which you’ll also need to watch against the cap.
And what’s up with “Xfinity” ?? To Xfinity and beyond! Guess that mean’s someone feels DISH will prevail in court protecting “TV Anywhere” or “TV Everywhere” – although, maybe it’s just cheaper to skip the battles that Charlie Ergen is famous for.
Just as soon as I get my main PC (Eee with new hard drive) up and running again. More on that later. :)
What would be nice is if third party DVR’s could tap into this “Xfinity” and utilize it as an “On Demand Gateway” since they cannot currently access Comcast’s VOD Library. Given that Tivo and Moxi can utilize the internet for other purposes… I’d love to see them both write an application that could take advantage of this. Despite the limited appeal (Comcast customers only), at 26 million and counting, hopefully it’s enough to get done. I could finally ditch the horrible Comcast DVR. Not that the equipment is bad (DCX3400 / 320GB), but their software is horrible.
Speaking of software, the remote DVR service should be coming to Central PA around Feb. 2010. It does require switching the backend systems from their own localized database, to universal database, along with new standardized source ID channel mapping. This requires a bit of engineering and some new equipment at each headend, so look for this new feature to slowly rollout Comcast’s footprint between now and next year at this time. Fortunately the current software installation has been going smoothly, so no unanticipated delays are expected.
little do you know comcast its self is changing its name to xfinity… its suppose to be a combat against verizon fios and apparently its suppose to help change the way people view the company in a whole…… comcast is changing its name from comcast to xfinity the uniforms are changing the logos are changing everything just about is changing. you want hype let everyone know about the name change apparently its suppose to take place february 12 and its not a rant or rave this is the real deal coming from an inside source