US Cable Support > Comcast HSI > Comcast Xfinity for Xbox launching soon (possibly next week)

reply to dtherbert

Re: Comcast Xfinity for Xbox launching soon (possibly next week)

reply to egeek84
PlayOn announced via Facebook if your blocked from HBOGO on your Xbox 360 its now available as a channel on there service.

»www.facebook.com/playontv/posts/···67975672

reply to utsports

reply to egeek84
Looks like Sony may be launching a similar service soon for their PS3.

I wonder if they will work with Comcast, like Microsoft did, to develop an Xfinity VoD app for it?

Sony to announce new PlayStation 3 video service, but what is it?
The Verge - April 2, 2012
»www.theverge.com/2012/4/2/291552···-service

An excerpt:

"As part of his usual rundown of the coming week's PSN content during the latest PlayStation Blogcast, Senior Social Media Manager Jeff Rubenstein teased listeners with a brief mention of a "cool new video service" that will be revealed for the PlayStation 3. "I can't tell you anything more about it right now," he says. "But it's really cool. We tried it out, and it's something I think you all will like. Another option for people, coming to PSN for your PS3." And just like that, Rubenstein plowed forward with the release list, offering no further hints of what we can expect from the announcement.

Let's examine a few possibilities:

Sony may be planning to even up the video score
Expanded video app selection: With Microsoft's recent acceleration in providing new video apps to Xbox Live users (»www.theverge.com/2011/11/9/25491···ard-2011), Sony could be feeling some pressure to broaden its own content selection. The PS3 initially led the Xbox 360 in this category with services like Vudu and MLB.TV, both of which were unavailable on the 360 until recently. Now Microsoft has quickly managed to leapfrog Sony with offerings like HBO GO, ESPN, and a native YouTube app. It could be an embarrassing turn of events for a console embraced by home theater enthusiasts, and Sony may be planning to even up the video score.
:
Live TV on your PS3:
Here's where things get a bit wild. Back in November, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sony had approached numerous TV networks with the goal of streaming their programming directly to its consumer devices via the web. Essentially, the PS3 would be transformed into a full-fledged cable box alternative. If this week's news is indeed the realization of these rumors, Sony and its partners have managed to keep an exceptionally tight lid on things. Odds point to this as the least probable theory, though it's easily the one that excites us most. It's also curious that Sony would launch a new service exclusively on the PlayStation 3 at this point in time — five years after the console launched — and seemingly leave the young PS Vita out of the mix. Perhaps whatever the company has been working on is simply better suited for the living room rather than a portable environment.

We'll have a much better sense of what Sony has up its sleeve in a matter of days. Hopefully it's something a bit more ambitious than PlayMemories. Hit »blog.us.playstation.com/2012/03/···eed-iii/ for the full podcast; video-related chatter begins at around the 6:15 mark."

Looks like this is the announcement for the Sony PS3:

Amazon scores another win in the VoD wars with PlayStation 3 deal
FierceCable - April 4, 2012
»www.fiercecable.com/story/amazon···12-04-04

"The video on demand market has been heating up ever since Netflix first started its instant streaming service, but Amazon just fired another shot at cable operators with news that its Instant Video service is now available on Sony PlayStation 3 consoles.

The PS3 system is the first video game box to offer the Instant Video service, and Amazon has added some new features to herald the living-room launch. By downloading the Amazon Instant Video app, PS3 users can get new "smart lists" featuring recently watched content, next episode links and personal recommendations. Amazon also notes that viewers can start a program on the Kindle Fire, and continue it on a PS3 device through the use of its Whispersync technology. The mention of Amazon's media tablet highlights how the company is steadily building its own media ecosystem, combining services with its own devices and third-party hardware.

Amazon Prime members can stream instant videos from the Amazon library to PS3 consoles starting immediately. For users who don't want to pay the $79-per-year Prime subscription fee, the Amazon Instant Video app also offers more than 120,000 TV shows and movies available for rent or purchase. In honor of the PS3 launch, Amazon is providing the first episodes of more than 100 TV shows for free so that both Prime and non-Prime customers can test out instant streaming through the game console app."

For more:
- see the Playstation blog post »blog.us.playstation.com/2012/04/···t-video/
- see this Engadget story »www.engadget.com/2012/04/03/amaz···ption-a/ "

The press release from Amazon: »www.businesswire.com/news/home/2···3-System

Edit: Added link to the press release

interesting! I wonder if the Amazon Prime app will hit the 360 as well?!

reply to telcodad
Looks like HBO Go will soon be available on the Xbox 360 for Comcast customers:

Comcast Prepped To Launch HBO Go On Xbox
MSO, Programmer Hashed Out Business Issues Unrelated to Platform: Source
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - April 4, 2012
»www.multichannel.com/article/482···Xbox.php

"Comcast subscribers will soon be able to log in to HBO's TV Everywhere service from the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console, after the two sides resolved business issues unrelated to the device itself, according to an industry source.

The MSO will allow Xfinity TV and Internet subscribers to access the HBO Go app on the Xbox as early as this week, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Sources confirmed that the companies have reached a deal.

HBO launched its app on the game platform (»www.multichannel.com/article/482···B_TV.php) last week, but it is not currently available through Comcast, Time Warner Cable or Bright House Networks.

Comcast and HBO declined to comment.

According to a person familiar with the negotiations, Comcast's holdup on the HBO Go service for Xbox had "nothing to do" with the technical integration with the game console. Rather, there were other business issues that Comcast and HBO were working out before the MSO gave the go-ahead on the Xbox.

Sources close to Comcast previously indicated that HBO had not agreed to all of the conditions it required of TV Everywhere partners, such as how subscriber information is handled on third-party devices and websites.

For now, Comcast, the largest pay TV provider in the U.S. with 22.3 million video subscribers, still will not provide access to the HBO authenticated programming service through Roku set-tops or Samsung Smart TVs, as many other HBO affiliates do.

Meanwhile, public-interest groups complained (»www.multichannel.com/article/482···uiry.php) that Comcast's policy of not counting video-on-demand consumed through its Xfinity TV app on the Xbox was anti-competitive. Comcast said that because the Xbox acts as effectively another set-top box, usage of the the Xfinity app is not subject to the 250-Gigabyte monthly limit on broadband users.

It is not known whether video streamed using the HBO Go app on Xbox will count toward the Comcast cap. The MSO, in its frequently asked questions section of its website, says all Internet-delivered video -- including that on its XfinityTV.com site -- counts toward total usage."

Also, an article on this in the NY Times: »mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2···comcast/

telcodad, can i just say that you rock for keeping us up to date and posting these news articles!! THANK YOU!

Well thank you. It's nice to be appreciated, especially when others have sometimes complained to me about how many articles I've posted on these forums.

While, posting news items is probably more Karl Bode's job, when I do come across an interesting news item on one of the websites that I normally visit, I like to share that with others who may not have seen it.

reply to JohnInSJ
Another article, on the Forbes site today, about the controversy over Comcast's exclusion of their Xbox VoD app from the data cap:

Are Broadband Markets Stagnating?
By Timothy B. Lee, Forbes - April 5, 2012
»www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/···gnating/

Some excerpts:

"Comcast recently announced that video streamed to the XBox from its own on-demand video service would be exempt from the bandwidth caps that apply to Comcast Internet service. Some open Internet advocates worry that the policy will give its own streaming video product an unfair advantage against third-party online video services like Netflix and Hulu. But Larry Downes argues »news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-574078···..again/ it's another example of network neutrality activists making much ado about nothing. Reihan Salam wants to know what I think »www.nationalreview.com/agenda/29···an-salam .

The controversy over the XBox On Demand illustrates a point I made in my 2008 paper for Cato on network neutrality: a network neutrality regime that carves out an exception for cable television service doesn’t make much sense. After all, the most important high-bandwidth Internet application in the coming decade is likely to be online video, and this application competes directly with the cable incumbents’ premium television services. So if broadband incumbents were going to adopt an anti-competitive strategy, it would most likely be focused on undermining online video services that compete with the broadband providers’ own proprietary video offerings.

Yet none of the leading network neutrality proposals, including the one the FCC adopted in 2010, covered the incumbents’ legacy video services. Network providers are prohibited from discriminating among Internet services like Netflix and Hulu, but they are free to reserve as much bandwidth as they want to their own proprietary video services.
:
[In 2008,] Comcast had just started upgrading its network to DOCSIS 3.0, which was allowing it to offer speeds as fast as 50 Mbps in selected markets. That same year, Comcast announced a 250 GB bandwidth cap, which at the time was seen as extremely generous. Comcast’s major telephone competitors, Verizon and AT&T, were in the midst of upgrading their copper infrastructure with much faster fiber optic cables. If you’d asked me at the time, I would have predicted that by 2012 we’d see competition between DOCSIS 3.0 and FiOS spurring both carriers to offer customers in 2012 dramatically faster speeds than they’d offered in 2008.

So far, the results have been disappointing. I’m a Comcast customer in Philadelphia, and my broadband connection gives me typical download speeds of less than 10 Mbps—not much different than I would have gotten in 2008. Verizon reached about 18 million households with its FiOS project and then stopped building, leaving cities like Baltimore and Boston with antiquated copper infrastructure, indefiniely. AT&T has shown no interest in upgrading U-Verse to an all-fiber network like FiOS. And in December, Verizon and Comcast effectively declared a truce in which Verizon would focus on wireless services and Verizon Wireless stores would begin hawking Comcast Internet services.

In short, the pace of progress in the broadband market seems to have stalled. The nation’s leading broadband providers appear to have calculated that pouring money into faster (wired) Internet access isn’t a good investment, and the major telephone incumbents—Verizon and AT&T—have effectively ceded the speed crown to cable incumbents like Comcast and focused on upgrading their wireless networks. Little surprise, then, that Comcast hasn’t raised its its 250 GB bandwidth cap in almost 4 years.

So I think open Internet activists are right to be concerned about the anti-competitive potential of Comcast exempting its own services from its bandwidth cap. The longer the cap remains stuck at 250 GB, the less it looks like a congestion-management technique and the more it looks like an effort to starve online video services of the bandwidth they need to compete directly with Comcast’s own video services. Larry Downes points to Comcast’s page »customer.comcast.com/help-and-su···ive-use/ stating that high-quality Netflix streams are about 2.3 GB per hour, implying that the 250 GB bandwidth cap gives you around 100 hours of video. Even this is just 3 hours of television per day, which is less than many households consume. But it also ignores the fact that Blu-Ray quality 1080p video requires closer to 10 GB per hour, meaning that Comcast’s bandwidth cap only allows you to watch about an hour of Blu Ray-quality video per month. As average video quality continues to increase, a 250 GB bandwidth cap is going to look more and more stingy."

'Are broadband markets stagnating'?

Uh, yeah. This is what happens when government is asleep at the wheel while monopolies/duopolies run the show.

And then, to top it all off, do everything in their power (up to and including bribing your local representatives) to prevent local munis from providing better service.

reply to telcodad
A blog item on the CNET site today about the Xbox VoD app controversy:

Commentary: Comcast has some Xplaining to do
Comcast's shifting explanations for its Xbox deal raise questions about the justification for its bandwidth caps and the different ways it charges consumers for video
By Matt Wood, Policy Director for Free Press
CNET - April 5, 2012
»news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-574100···g-to-do/

Besides the article, the reader comments after it are very interesting too.

I particularly like one of comments, where the poster points out that Comcast's latest excuse ("similar to traditional cable television service that is delivered to the set-top box, this content doesn't count toward our data usage threshold"), doesn't really make sense either.

If it's just a Cable TV service (with the Xbox acting just like another cable box) as Comcast now says, and "it has nothing to do with your internet service then I should be able to cancel my internet service and it still work. Obviously that's not the case."

Yep, that's all they're going to do - come up with lame excuses.

Bottom line is that this won't change until someone sues them for violating the NBCU merger conditions, which they are clearly doing. The FCC probably won't care.

reply to egeek84
Its on my Xbox the App anyway

reply to telcodad
The latest article I've seen on the Xbox VoD app controversy:

Is Net Neutrality Being Misrepresented?
Larry Downes: Media activists are distorting net neutrality regarding Comcast's Xbox plan
By Abby Johnson, WebProNews - April 11, 2012
»www.webpronews.com/is-net-neutra···-2012-04

BTW - Larry Downes' arguments were countered in this CNET article: »news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-574100···g-to-do/

In this WebProNews article, however, Comcast did provide a response to all the opposition:

"In a statement released to WebProNews regarding the opposition to its new policy, Comcast told us:

"Our treatment of the Xfinity services being delivered through an Xbox is wholly consistent with our commitment to maintaining an open Internet and with the FCC's Open Internet Order. Our standard is clear. If we are delivering a traditional cable service on a Title VI basis, where the customer is already paying us for that service, and all we are doing is delivering it in IP over our managed network through a different device that effectively serves as an additional outlet in the house, then we don't believe it should count against their data usage threshold. There is no 'discrimination' here - remember, we do count customer use of XfinityTV.com, the Xfinity TV app and nbc.com against data usage threshold standards (because that's not a Title VI service being delivered only in the home).""

reply to egeek84
Has anyone lost their bandwidth meter since installing the Xfinity app? I installed it and activated it on my 360, my modem rebooted and it has been gone from the page ever since.

reply to telcodad

reply to MrJames