Comcast Takes the Beta Tag Off Xfinity TV
Now rolling out to Comcast video customers everywhere, Xfinity TV will deliver more than 150,000 hours of programming to all their digital subscribers—irrespective of what ISP they use. Meaning, even if you don’t use Comcast as a service provider, you can get Xfinity to your computer or set-top-box.
PaidContent.org has the scoop for us, outlining the expected content and outcome of this thorough release:
The service is layered on top of Comcast’s all-access video portal, the former Fancast.com now known as Xfinity TV. (The brand transition is confusing: Fancast.com is still the domain and the brand on the identifying browser info but the site is all Xfinity TV. )
Any user can access a large chunk of the programming, including the same content they would get on basic Hulu.com plus something not on Hulu—CBS (NYSE: CBS). But only Comcast digital video subs have access to the premium cable programming from Showtime, HBO, Cinemax, Starz and Encore, plus some programming from a variety of basic cable nets. Comcast says premium Xfinity TV offers 150,000 video “choices” from nearly 90 content partners, some in HD.
With video programming everywhere on the Internet, NBC.com, CBS.com, Hulu, and streaming through Netflix, Comcast certainly seems to have been behind the curve. However, now Comcast digital subscribers will have instant access to a multitude of their favorites like never before. And as well, without the download, as Xfinity TV is entirely browser based.
As paidContent.org says in their article, the branding is currently a little confusing as customers must access it via fancast.com—yet everything on the site brands with the words Xfinity TV. Looks, though, that some of the videos are just drawn in from other sites (for example: Smallville from the CW opens in a new window at CW.com.) Movies split themselves between subscription-only and free-access with a spiffy little control that allows a user to hide those that require subscriptions.
In spite of the withdrawal of beta status, a lot of thumbnails for the movies on the system are still missing.
We’ll have to see where it goes on from here, but the comments about the gross total of hours of content doesn’t seem to be an exaggeration.
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