Driven by a fear of becoming a "dumb pipe" provider, last summer Comcast unveiled their Fancast streaming video service -- part of a broader push into offering online content and digging their teeth into online ad revenue. The nation's largest cable operator last weekend unveiled the Fancast store beta, which shifts the service from just streaming video to actual television and film downloads. Over 3,000 film and TV titles are currently available, with pricing starting from $3.99 for 24-hour film rentals, $9.99 for film purchases, and $1.99 for TV shows.

Comcast's obviously eager to go head to head with Blockbuster, CinemaNow and Amazon in a video download market that's getting increasingly crowded. Combined with the launch of the now shuttered YouTube knockoff Ziddio, as well as Comcast's purchase of Fandango, movies.com, and dailycandy.com, Comcast is spending almost as much time on content as they are running a network. Whether that's a good idea is something that remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, my attempt to install the Fancast Media manager on 64 bit Windows Vista resulted in an error message informing me I needed to have Windows Vista installed. If you're curious, Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas tells me the service will count against the company's 250GB per month bandwidth cap -- a move that certainly saves them from loads of grief from network neutrality supporters.