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Cable departs from Hulu model with 'TV Everywhere'

edition.cnn.com — Two cable powerhouses have announced an ambitious pilot program that aims to convince their customers that, actually, TV on the web should not be free. With a service called TV Everywhere, Comcast and Time Warner will give cable subscribers access to "premium" television content via broadband, and later cellphone connections.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 27, 2009

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  • darknecross, on 06/27/2009, -0/+173With the arrival of TV Everywhere, many avid internet TV watchers return to torrents and RSS-based subscriptions.
  • Twee, on 06/27/2009, -0/+109People won't pay $50+ a month for TV over the internet. Also, the cable companies lose the $5-$15 per month cable boxes and DVRs that they rent out to their customers when going online. People will, however, pay $9 a month a la netflix.
  • inactive, on 06/27/2009, -2/+102Comcast is the Devil.
  • Eisen4, on 06/27/2009, -2/+74***** comcast
  • inactive, on 06/27/2009, -1/+62I use the internet because it's not bundled with ***** I don't want.
  • inactive, on 06/27/2009, -2/+61I work for Comcast. ***** COMCAST.
  • thebigredcat, on 06/27/2009, -0/+50I already pay for tv. I pay for it every month when my cable bill arrives. I pay for it again with every tv commercial I watch. Then, online I pay for it again by watching embedded ads or flash based banner ads. For many of us, our cable company is also our net provider, which makes the fourth round of paying for it.

    Are they saying that they can't make a profit by being a monopoly that charges it's customers repeatedly for the same product while at the same time providing a service level of service that is inferior to much of the rest of the world (high speed internet specifically)?
  • x2wenty4x, on 06/27/2009, -0/+46They just don't get it.
  • PityDaFool, on 06/27/2009, -0/+39Why wouldn't the stations just broadcast their content themselves and skip the cable company? Or at the very least, go with a company that isn't taking such a large cut. If comcast wants to sell internet TV, let them, it's just going to help accelerate the process and end up killing the cable companies in the end.
  • jftitan, on 06/27/2009, -1/+38grasping for straws. only they need to fine tune this model of theres and actually listen to the consumers. Right now its fishing for who is willing to eat the ***** that comes out of their mouths.
  • inactive, on 06/27/2009, -0/+35I'll write a ***** check to the BBC right now rather than having Comcast charge me $20 - $40 PER MONTH for 100 channels of garbage I don't watch.

    Why the flying ***** should I be forced to pirate things I actually feel the desire to pay for?
  • inactive, on 06/27/2009, -4/+37I haven't watched live TV in ~4 years. I get everything I want through Hulu / torrents (mostly BBC4 docs, which I can't stream from BBC in the US because they are ***** retarded).
  • Wabashson, on 06/27/2009, -0/+31I have heard from other sources, that the part of this plan that TW and CC are not publicing is the notion that they will try to restrict internet access to sites (like hulu) that offer free TV.
    THIS is why people steal media. If you offer it in a easy legal way, no problem. I don't even try to ad-block hulu's advertising--but when you start getting greedy, I'm just going to go to PirateBay.com and download it for free.
  • andyisaac1, on 06/27/2009, -0/+30Comcast and TWC need to fix their customer service first before I consider throwing anymore money at them!
  • lostinseganet, on 06/27/2009, -3/+25But cable and internet comes out of the same damn port. If they cut the price down to $35 then they would have a winner.
  • inactive, on 06/27/2009, -1/+23I hate it when things go comcastic
  • ceredron, on 06/27/2009, -0/+22if you're gonna get ***** by somebody, might as well get paid, right?
  • muckraker62, on 06/27/2009, -1/+23No joke. I cut my cable bill about five months ago and have been doing fine with my Netflix subscription and Hulu (with a little bit of over-the-air programming thrown in just for good measure). My reason for doing so? I was simply fed up with paying $70 a month for a cable package, of which I only watched about four total channels, the rest being total and utter crap.

    The cable companies need to get it through their heads that consumers are tired of paying out the ass for substandard programming that is cluttered with garbage.
  • KennMac, on 06/27/2009, -2/+23Large entities like Comcast and Time Warner squirm when confronted with the idea of a changing market and threatened profits. Instead of adapting and embracing the changes around them, large private enterprises will always choose to fight it with brute force, disinformation, legislation, and FUD.

    We see this phenomenon in the Health Care industry and Energy (ie. Coal and Big Oil). Large corporations are truly the cancers of society.
  • skynet2029, on 06/27/2009, -1/+22And this service will probably be exempted from the caps that Time Warner wants to add to force people over to using it instead of alternatives.
  • inactive, on 06/27/2009, -0/+21I would GLADLY pay whatever British citizens are charged for BBC4 (well, BBC in general in the form of taxes) to be able to stream their docs.

    In simple terms:

    BBC4 > most of US cable television
  • EnforcerErik, on 06/27/2009, -0/+19All this does is make it so instead of watching ad-supported Hulu I go back to torrents.
  • kurtwinter, on 06/27/2009, -1/+20Hulu is only chance to earn money for your content. I will not pay another ***** bill to the cable company. Back to the Pirate Bay!
  • Bulletbillx, on 06/27/2009, -0/+19This whole idea is pants on head retarded. No one will pay for something they already legally got for free.

    Also besides the obvious things like torrents I bet traffic to illicit streaming sites would increase 1000 fold.
  • Elderon, on 06/27/2009, -0/+18"Consumers vote every single month with their pocketbook," he added. "They don't have to subscribe to cable. They don't have to pay for these services, yet they do."

    That just makes me furious. We don't buy your service because we approve, we buy your service because you cable companies pretty much have monopolies in the areas you serve. If I want high speed internet I'm pretty much forced to pay you because you stifled almost all competition. These morons really need to get a grip on reality. Comcast especially, they've gotten rid of on demands free tv shows and now charge for them. ridiculous and they wonder why people like torrents and hulu.
  • jeepjock, on 06/27/2009, -1/+18No...to the Cable TV Industry; making us pay for something we already get for free!!!
  • tdbndtb, on 06/27/2009, -2/+19*****
  • cosmiccarl, on 06/27/2009, -0/+16Free beats FEE!
  • inactive, on 06/27/2009, -0/+16why don't you use the internet to learn some basic grammar.
  • franklymister, on 06/27/2009, -0/+15Not caps, packet shaping. This is exactly the kind of thing that Net Neutrality is intended to prevent. As long as these guys have control over the type of data you're allowed to receive through your internet connection, they can decide to block lower cost or free alternatives to the things they want to charge a premium for.
  • dagamer34, on 06/27/2009, -0/+15Student plan? WHERE?
  • utopianfiat, on 06/27/2009, -1/+15So usenet access should be free for everyone? That really worked well during Eternal September.

    Moreover, isn't Comcrap the same ISP that decided they were going to shape traffic to cut down on video streaming? So, they're shaping traffic to get rid of IP streaming media, but are providing express access to their own, pay-per-month streaming service. If that's not anticompetitive, apples taste like beef.
    I sure hope someone is drawing up a lawsuit against this right now.
  • Fishn2, on 06/27/2009, -1/+15Hey, we feels the same way about Hulu.

    The BBC iPlayer and 4od services are really good, but the BBC is paid for through British people paying TV licensing fees, unless you start paying the same fee to the BBC what right do you have to complain that you can't view it?

  • MrBogard, on 06/27/2009, -0/+12In other news: Cable's streaming TV response has failed!
  • newstart, on 06/27/2009, -0/+12All the MBAs, Research Analysts, Strategists in these cable companies are better of reading the comments here to gauge the response their decision will have rather than burning money and then wondering why people started torrenting more.
  • Saulidus, on 06/27/2009, -2/+14That comment doesn't even make sense seeing as how this is a capitalist plan.
  • superkendall, on 06/27/2009, -1/+13If "TVEverywhere" means I can pay for just a handful of channels, then I might go for it. If I can save recordings to view later and move to a portable device.

    But starting out with TNT and TBS? Even free I find those channels of dubious value. There's just no way I would pay for them, and a package that included them would have to have something else mighty amazing to offset the mediocrity.

    I'll bet in the end cable stations will not be able to resist bundling just as they have always done, and I really will not be able to buy just the Discovery or History channel as I'd prefer...
  • kfxrcer1, on 06/27/2009, -0/+12I don't work for Comcast. ***** COMCAST.
  • AndrewIsAwesome, on 06/27/2009, -0/+12He has a point, people have ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got...an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially. They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
  • jeremymccurdy, on 06/27/2009, -0/+12That's the main problem, people are paying way too much for what they're getting. It's not getting any better either, TV companies love to jack up the price and ***** around with people's cable/satellite packages for no good reason.
  • superkendall, on 06/27/2009, -3/+14What right do we have? We have the right because rather than letting us pay they block us for no reason whatsoever.

    If they will not let us pay they obviously then prefer us to steal. Message received.
  • utopianfiat, on 06/27/2009, -3/+13"With the arrival of TV Everywhere, many avid internet TV watchers will see it, check the price tag, and flip them off."
    Fixed
  • Hermmunster, on 06/27/2009, -0/+10This is total *****. It's a ploy. Comcast has a cap on your internet use. If you used this, and paid more, you'd still exceed your cap quickly. On top of that, it would seem that at this point, it would be safe to conclude, that Comcast implemented the cap to discourage video on the web so they could offer their own. Hasta la vista net neutrality.
  • inactive, on 06/27/2009, -1/+10On Demand SUCKS dude. The same 4 episodes of the same TV shows on for 6 months? Oh and don't forget the same ***** 20 movies for 6 months at a time...
  • dafragsta, on 06/27/2009, -0/+8That's exactly it. I'd be willing to pay a premium for on-demand web TV, but I'm not willing to pay as much as is charged by cable companies for premium cable. There are options now, and I'm not willing to spend $50 for a package of premium channels that got canceled in the first place because I only watched the original series on HBO. All the movies were nice to open me up to things I hadn't thought of seeing, but for the most part, the major movies were redundant to my DVD collection. I'm willing to pay $20 a month for every single premium channel on demand. I'm willing to pay $10 for basic cable on demand. Those are the price points for me at which time it becomes too good to ignore, but cable TV is seriously overpriced. They can still make money by selling set top boxes (as in non-proprietary DOCSIS or ethernet set-top boxes) but I don't to lease overpriced hardware anymore.
  • HeavyWave, on 06/27/2009, -0/+8Why would you work for the Devil?
  • DarthVolta, on 06/27/2009, -1/+9***** Comcast, forever.
  • inyearstocome, on 06/27/2009, -0/+8Dear Cable companies,

    TV is now digital and takes up far less bandwidth than its analog past. This has opened up a new door for you to allow cable subscribers to watch tv from anywhere.... because it can be part of the internet. Internet access is already unlimited and high enough in bandwidth in most areas. COMBINE cable TV with internet packages, and let us pay one price for internet with TV available wherever we want it.

    Sincerely,

    Guy who thinks too logically.
  • str3ama, on 06/27/2009, -0/+8he means he worked for comcast.
  • Fishn2, on 06/27/2009, -1/+9"The annual cost of a colour TV licence (set by the Government) is currently £142.50."

    It's really not that cheap. Plus you get fined over a grand if you have a TV plugged into an antennae, whether or not you have it tuned to any TV channels.

    And I definately do not disagree with you - the BBC is one of the best media content providers in the world.
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