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Comcast is announcing today it has made its On Demand Online service available nationally in beta for no additional cost to customers. Called Fancast XFINITY TV, it includes 27 networks, including HBO, Cinemax, Starz, A&E, History, CBS, BBC, E!, Syle, Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, Univision, TNT, AMC, CBS and others. Movies and shows available now include every episode of The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm (most current season), Crash (from Starz), Man vs. Wild (Discovery), The Closer (TNT), The Prisoner (AMC) and movies like Slumdog Millionaire, The Mummy, Milk, Hancock, June and WALL-E. Content and networks will be updated and added.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Of course there’s no catch now – can’t get the regulators pissed until the deal closes! Also, gotta make some attempt to chase Hulu. The other shoe will drop in 2011.
I wonder if watching too much of this would violate their bandwidth limits.
Could the catch be that Netflix has on demand movies & TV for nine bucks a month?
I just hope the unions are monitoring all this…
The catch is that they need things to point to that are pro-consumer when the gov’t starts questioning parts of the merger. Interestingly, it’s a catch for them, and a benefit for the consumer.
Time Warner Cable has been doing this for years, and there has not been an additional cost. At least not a cost they disclose…
Not too impressed with this. It seems like just an aggregator of links. Many of the shows I clicked on just opened up a Hulu link on the page, and some of the Lost eps I clicked on opened a new ABC.com window.
So basically, this is nothing we haven’t seen before. The HBO/Cinemax shows are only for subscribers, so again, nothing special.
Could this be the New Media in which actors have given away their residuals until the end of time?
I foresee some issues with allowing people to stream TV AND having a soft cap on the bandwidth. Even with typical compression rates, DVD-quality media has a bit-rate around 1 Mbps – so about two hours of that a day (way under the amount of TV the average American household watches per day) puts you right around 250 Gb/mo. Comcast can’t have it both ways.
Hopefully they include their awesome movie descriptions
from TODAY’S cnn.com:
Comcast Implements Hulu Killer
Posted on December 15, 2009, 1:45 PM, by Editor, under Media Business.
It’s on demand content for subscribers only. As in, they pay. Which is better than Hulu, where they don’t pay. (At least it’s better for people who depend on getting paid to make content.)
It’s called FanCast Xfinity, is still in beta, but is being rolled out by Comcast over the next six months. For the the moment it’s being provided without extra charge to existing Comcast customers.
What makes this a Hulu killer? The depth of the content available, including HBO, Starz, Cinemax, MTV, CBS, Fox, and NBC. The biggest limit as of now? No HD.
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I am no genius, ok, let’s just acknowledge that right off the bat. but, didn’t i JUST say this the other day? didn’t I JUST SAY that comcast, now owning nbc, which owns hulu, would NOT allow hulu to remain the unprofitable mess it IS. and, what, a week?
here it is folks. my guess is comcast – a cable company that actually knows about network, cable, internet, you name it, will MONETIZE the internet by making it a subscription based system.
you notice how they were like, “duh?” ONE WEEK AFTER THEY BOUGHT NBC which owns HULU!
now cbs and abc will be FEVERISHLY imitating comcast and nbc, because, throughout ALL of this: union warfare, tech changes, ALL the back and forth, you know what’s been MISSING?
UNION LEADERSHIP.
The simple act of making common sense judgments and informed guesses about what’s coming tech wise, how to monetize it, the common sense union decisions as to what will be required to tie into the amptp’s solution no matter WHAT or WHEN or HOW they do it.
percentage of distributors gross? hopefully across ALL platforms, but at LEAST in new media, which could end up dwarfing all other platforms anyway?
but, no -
instead, we have cracker-jack knuckleheads leading us like ken howard and amy aquino and richard masur, who are fighting OLD battles, under OLD rules, settling OLD scores, and not ONE of them, not ONE truly even understands the technology involved. NOT ONE!
I’ll never forget the ny division meeting, oh, ’08 at the hotel, where the membership and big shots like alec “the mouth” baldwin and meryl “I don’t even need to speak, I’m just here” streep, parroting the idiotic a-lister party line: “now is not a good time to take a stand.”
how’d THAT work out for ya alec and meryl?
and I remember, at the VERY END of that meeting, a KID, 19? 18? got to the mike, barely making it to speak to a bunch of self-satisfied ny members walking out shaking their heads at the utter craziness of rosenberg and allen, and this whole “fight NOW” movement, and this kid turned around and SCHOOLED this crowd. just destroyed them, with information 3/4′s of them didn’t even understand. essentially he was saying “uh… is this on? yes, well, hello dinosaurs, I’m jim (?), I’m 19, I’m the FUTURE OF YOUR MONEY, and, uh, I’d like to make some myself, and if you listen to complete and utter idiots like richard masur and paul christie and all these fools who have been rabidly hurling slander and threats at our elected leadership – who are trying to SAVE YOU FROM YOURSELVES because you are too STUPID to even understand what you are talking about? here’s the deal: the “future” is NOW. the internet? is NOW. “we” the coming generation are going to roll over you old folk, and those of us in that coming generation of actors would sure love to make money, have p&h, have workplace protections, have residuals, have force majeure, have clip consent, have product placement protections, etc., and, because I have a certainty that nearly every single one of you in this room tonight, has NO IDEA what you are talking about, let me fill you in on a few things.”
he then went on to say “kids watch their computers and hand-held devices – NOT THE TV”
anybody see the story last week about the abc-disney head of tv chick sending her kid off to college, who told her “mom – I don’t WANT or NEED a TV.”
this network chick has NO CLUE. NONE.
this kid at the union meet? he was ushered off the mike “meeting over!” and I yelled out “that is the smartest thing I’ve heard tonight” then, ended up in a six month pissing match with 4000 year old tom ligon because I happened to sit next to amj, who I’d just met for the first time in my life.
talk about missing the forest for the trees.
again, this is a free site: come on ken howard, amy aquino, richard masur, paul christie, mike hodge, james cromwell, mike farrell, ned vaughn, amy brenemann, adam arkin, the list goes on, and SHOW us your chops about monetization, before comcast comes and puts your house on a flat-bed truck and drives it away.
do we have a fair deal, a good deal on a subscription-based monetization approach to new media?
NO. WE HAVE A UNION BUSTING DEAL.
so, again, PLEASE, enlighten us, somebody, ANYBODY from the moderate side of the aisle, who has ANY CLUE AT ALL.
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO in october 2010 leading to a signed deal in 2011, that gets us back what YOUR predecessors gave away, and locks in a fair system of compensation for sag actors going through the 21st century?
please: be specific, and if you don’t know what you’re talking about, hand the ball off to someone who does.
and PLEASE, don’t worry. it doesn’t MATTER if the amptp reads your “ideas” for 2011. they ALREADY KNOW THEM.
the ONLY thing they don’t know? is whether 2011 will feature a sag that will strike to get a fair deal. THAT’S ALL THEY AREN’T 100% sure of. yet.
“Could this be the New Media in which actors have given away their residuals until the end of time?”
Probably. Also…
The last TV/Theatrical Contract negotiations probably EXCEEDED all of the AMPTP/Network producers’ greatest expectations.
The Producers, themselves, were probably shocked and awed that with so little effort on their part together with the use of simple, ordinary, typical, negotiating BLUFFS they could/would have achieved so much from the great Screen Actors Guild.
Stratically speaking: All the producers had to do was to plant the seed of MISTRUST in the minds of SAG’s naive membership. The seed grew in Actors’ imaginations. False information, rumors, and ennuendos, spread like wildfire. The flames even reached a few of SAG’s biggest stars. The seeds of mistrust and destruction grew into the notion that SAG’s leadership could be trusted. Needless to say, this simple Producers’ strategy worked. Lack of trust, an insecure membership, and SAG’s, divided, polemic, internal politics, did the rest.
Without UNITY, TRUST, and/or a Strike Authorization, a divided, confused, SAG membership painted their leadership, Negotiating Team, Chief Negotiator, and themselves, into a corner.
Add to this the fact that even though SAG members had walked in support the WGA strike, without SAG’s being able to unite its own membership and/or rally enough support for a Strike Authoriztion vote, the WGA could not even hope to, unfortunately, return SAG’s favor.
Negotiations 101: A union has absolutely no other weapon, no power, nada, nothing, without, FIRST, obtaining a Strike Authorization from it’s membership before going into negotiations.
Because SAG’s house was divided against itself, the writing was on the wall. All producers had to do was wait for SAG to implode.
In fact some of SAG’s Producer friends and Partners may even feel embarrassed that they were able to take such an unfair advantage of SAG Actors. Oh, well…
SAG Actors have only ourselves to blame.
ra
There is a catch. You cannot access the channels if you don’t subscribe to those premium channels. I’m a Comcast subscriber and I meet the requirements to access this new site, but because I don’t pay for HBO, Cinemax or Showtime, I cannot watch films that are airing on those channels. So basically, it’s just a web version of their On Demand service with the same restrictions.
the catch is that it counts against your bandwidth cap.
“So basically, it’s just a web version of their On Demand service with the same restrictions.”
FOR THE CONSUMER.
FOR THE ACTOR?
WE HAVE AN ABSURD COMPENSATION PACKAGE FOR NEW MEDIA WE CAN’T GET OUT OF UNLESS WE THREATEN TO STRIKE OR STRIKE – BECAUSE THE “MODERATES” WHO NOW RUN THE UNION CAVED IN AND SIGNED A RIDICULOUS DEAL IN 2009 AND NOW THEY HAVE ZERO PLAN TO GET US OUT OF IT.
this is the point.
“AND NOW THEY HAVE ZERO PLAN TO GET US OUT OF IT.”
They have no plan to get us out of it because they have no desire to get us out of it. The current SAG leadership got control of the union (at the behest of management) by sabotaging the pro-membership board members in order to accept this deal and keep us in it.
At the NATL membership meeting he despicable Mr. White clearly said that his agenda is “to make SAG easy to work with, and hard to fight.” When the contract contains no minimums, protections, residuals, rights to clip consent etc. it makes the union VERY EASY to work with, and gives management no reason to fight it. The despicable Mr. White has zero intention of trying to improve the current contract. He works for the side that got us into it.