Tag: Comcast

Sony will sell TV and film content via Comcast’s Xfinity

MUMBAI: Comcast, the largest cable company and home internet service provider in the United States on 11 March announced that it has signed an agreement with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) to sell the studio’s titles through the Xfinity On Demand – the digital store for Xfinity, the company’s rebranded trademark for triple play services in Comcast’s largest markets including the company’s digital cable, cable Internet access and cable telephone services and radio.

In the coming weeks, Xfinity TV customers will be able to purchase Sony Pictures movies and TV shows to own and access any time, any where, on any device, often before the DVD release.

The Sony Pictures library is a terrific addition to Comcast’s rapidly expanding offering of hit films and TV shows available for purchase. Comcast Cable Senior Vice President of Content Acquisition Michael Schreiber said in a press statement, “The response to the digital store has been encouraging and tells us our customers love the flexibility and ease of purchasing content directly from Xfinity On Demand to watch when and where they want it.”

“Sony Pictures is pleased that this agreement brings significant titles to Comcast customers,” said SPHE President Man Jit Singh. “We deeply value our relationship with Comcast and look forward to working closely with them to meet the needs of all audiences.”

Among the first titles available for purchase will be the multi-Academy Award nominated American Hustle which will be available to own digitally on March 11.

Other Sony Pictures movie and TV titles that will be available for purchase in the coming weeks include the critically-acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad, as well as popular movies such as Captain Phillips, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, The Amazing Spiderman and 21 Jump Street.

Comcast customers have the ability to purchase movies and television shows – often weeks before they are available to rent or purchase on Blu-ray and DVD – and store them seamlessly in the cloud. Their content can be enjoyed anywhere, anytime, on their TV, PC or mobile devices. Purchased titles are added to customers’ On Demand menus which are easily accessible on the TV, online or via the Xfinity On Demand Purchases app.

The Comcast catalog now includes content from FOX, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros.

March 11, 2014
DEN’s Manchanda: Consumers will drive phase III & IV digitisation

MUMBAI: The government mandate to digitise roughly 130 million Indian cable TV homes has been progressing in stops and starts over the past year. But with phase I and phase II almost complete and billing starting or expected to start soon, industry is now gearing up for the third and final fourth phases. And India’s cable cowboy and leading MSO Den Networks’ CMD Sameer Manchanda believes that the process is going to be smoother and easier in the smaller towns and hinterland India.

“It is the consumer who wants digitisation in phase III and phase IV,” said DEN Networks CMD Sameer Manchanda in an interview to CNBC TV 18 today. “Seeing the success of phase I and phase II, it’s the consumer in these smaller towns and rural India who are pushing for the digitisation.”

The ministry of information and broadcasting has declared 31 December 2014 as the sunset date for analogue cable TV. And along with that TRAI has been prodding and pushing the rickety cable TV architecture to upgrade quickly.

Manchanda told the business channel that the government mandate combined with the consumer push, will result in digitisation being completed nationally in the next 15 months, giving leeway for a three month delay.

“We are one of the largest players, with a fairly high share of cable TV homes,” said Manchanda during the course of the interview.

90 million of the 130 million TV homes nationally are delivered TV services via cable, he pointed out adding that “while 20 million homes have already been digitised in phase I and II, around 70-75 million are left to undergo the process in phase III and IV,” he added.

DEN Networks has seeded around 5 million set top boxes – a 25 per cent share of this 20 million digitised universe – and will need to digitise another eight million analogue homes in phase III and phase IV areas. “Of course we will be expanding and have raised money for the same. So we will be doing much more in the remaining phases,” he said.

Though Manchanda acknowledged the competition is coming in from the direct-to-home (DTH) players, he still believes that consumers prefer cable TV over DTH in digitised environment. “In the 42 towns which have so far been digitised, we have seen that 70-72 per cent is cable while 28-30 per cent is DTH, if you leave Chennai out. We do understand there is competition. But what we have seen in phase I and II – and I believe the same will play out in phase III and IV – is that in a digital universe viewers are preferring cable TV,” he revealed.

Cable, according to Manchanda, in the last one year, has added roughly 85 -90 per cent of the homes that got digitised in the 42 towns.

Addressing the question on the coming in of 4G in India, Manchanda said, “As far as 4G goes, I see cable TV and 4G complementing each other. Digitisation has provided us the bedrock for further change like elsewhere in the world and deliver internet and broadband. So far, India has witnessed speeds like 512 kbps, but here we are talking of speeds of 100 mbps and beyond. And we will be leapfrogging technology like offering ethernet on wire or cable and Docsis 3.0. .We will be launching broadband in March-April. I see a complete revolution coming in with broadband and cable TV companies offering triple play services.”

With television here to stay and going to HD and 3D and video getting denser, Manchanda believes the need for fixed bandwidth from consumers at home will rise. “Indian cable TV companies are in an advantageous position as they are the only ones having a wire going into homes – apart from MTNL and BSNL. Hence they will be moving in the way cable companies in the US, Korea have,” Manchanda told the channel.

Citing Comcast, the largest media and cable company which also offers telecom services as an example, Manchanda said that India is going to be moving in the same direction in the next three to five years. “It would change the way education, video and everything else on the internet is done,” he said.

January 6, 2014
Comcast, TWC likely to close acquisition deal

MUMBAI: Time Warner Cable and Comcast Corp are likely to close an acquisition deal that could be worth $58 billion. It is learnt that the duo are in informal discussion for the same.

Several pay TV operators have showed interest in acquiring Time Warner Cable. While so far it was Charter Communications that was eyeing the operator, now several media reports are hinting towards a possible acquisition by Comcast.

Charter has been on the hunt for an acquisition, as John Malone, who controls 27 per cent in the company through Liberty Global, looks to bootstrap Charter’s growth. With 4.3 million subscribers, mergers and acquisitions has become an ongoing strategy for Charter. It should be noted that earlier in the year, Charter bought Optimum West from Cablevision for $1.6 billion.

Media reports suggest that Comcast and Charter could, however, buy Time Warner Cable together, and divide its holdings, as they did with Adelphia Communications back in 2006. Comcast could take the New York City operation and gain a more valuable presence there, while Charter could gain dominance in LA.

Consolidation in the cable industry is likely as MSOs look to gain enough size to have a card to play against content owners regarding programming costs considering that no media company could be economically viable if they lose 33 per cent of the country’s pay-TV subscribers.

One way or another, TWC will likely be bought by someone. It lost 306,000 video subscribers in the third quarter after a month-long blackout of CBS and Showtime in a retransmission dispute.

TWC currently has 11 million customers, and Comcast has 21 million; together, they would serve about a third of the nation’s pay-TV subscribers.

November 25, 2013
Close Charter launches TV streaming app

MUMBAI: Charter Communications launched its first mobile TV streaming app on Tuesday, offering a lineup of more than 100 live TV channels in the home, though the plan is to eventually allow authenticated customers to access live TV streams while they are on the go as well, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said during Charter’s third quarter earnings call.

Rutledge said the MSO anticipates that the new Charter TV app, offered first on Apple devices and coming later to the Android platform, will eventually add video-on-demand content to the mix and offer out-of-home access.

Rutledge said: “Charter’s TV app is the beginning of a lot of things. It may ultimately be monetisable in ways that are different than we currently envision it.”

“We may sell download-to-go services. We may sell video-on-demand everywhere. We may sell subscriptions everywhere,” he said. “But right now our primary business and our primary objective is to enhance our service offering and to make the total value of what we sell more valuable to the consumer.”

Rutledge, who was a champion of Wi-Fi at Cablevision Systems, said Charter is drawing up a Wi-Fi plan of its own.

“We think that Wi-Fi makes sense,” Rutledge said, noting that the MSO intends to start off by using dual SSIDs in Wi-Fi gear installed at commercial customer locations.

“We want to start putting it out in our commercial customer base next year…While we don’t have a complete rollout plan yet, we’re working on beginning to deploy Wi-Fi at Charter,” Rutledge said.

He did not mention if Charter has any plans to join the “Cable WiFi” roaming initiative that counts five members – Comcast, Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and Cox Communications – that have collectively deployed more than 200,000 Wi-Fi hot spots, with more than 500,000 on the horizon.

November 7, 2013
Charter launches TV streaming app

MUMBAI: Charter Communications launched its first mobile TV streaming app on Tuesday, offering a lineup of more than 100 live TV channels in the home, though the plan is to eventually allow authenticated customers to access live TV streams while they are on the go as well, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said during Charter’s third quarter earnings call.

Rutledge said the MSO anticipates that the new Charter TV app, offered first on Apple devices and coming later to the Android platform, will eventually add video-on-demand content to the mix and offer out-of-home access.

Rutledge said: “Charter’s TV app is the beginning of a lot of things. It may ultimately be monetisable in ways that are different than we currently envision it.”

“We may sell download-to-go services. We may sell video-on-demand everywhere. We may sell subscriptions everywhere,” he said. “But right now our primary business and our primary objective is to enhance our service offering and to make the total value of what we sell more valuable to the consumer.”

Rutledge, who was a champion of Wi-Fi at Cablevision Systems, said Charter is drawing up a Wi-Fi plan of its own.

“We think that Wi-Fi makes sense,” Rutledge said, noting that the MSO intends to start off by using dual SSIDs in Wi-Fi gear installed at commercial customer locations.
“We want to start putting it out in our commercial customer base next year…While we don’t have a complete rollout plan yet, we’re working on beginning to deploy Wi-Fi at Charter,” Rutledge said.

He did not mention if Charter has any plans to join the “Cable WiFi” roaming initiative that counts five members – Comcast, Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and Cox Communications – that have collectively deployed more than 200,000 Wi-Fi hot spots, with more than 500,000 on the horizon.

November 7, 2013
Netflix said to negotiate with US cable companies for set-top box app

MUMBAI: Netflix is in talks with several US cable companies with the aim of making its video streaming app available on set-top boxes, according to various reports. The reports say that Netflix’s discussions with US operators, including Comcast and Suddenlink, are at an early stage with no deal expected soon. Last month the UK’s Virgin Media became the first cable operator to offer Netflix to its customers; companies in the US have so far been reluctant to embrace streaming services, seeing the technology as broadly competitive with their traditional content offerings.

One reported sticking point in the negotiations is that Netflix is pushing for the cable companies to adopt its Open Connect content delivery network, which it argues will provide the best streaming quality. Previously Netflix had restricted 3D and what it calls “Super HD” content, which requires a higher bitrate, to internet service providers that participated in the Open Connect initiative, but Time Warner Cable argued that its network was “more than capable of delivering this content to Netflix subscribers.” Netflix later opened up Super HD streaming to all ISPs.

October 14, 2013
lost 2.5 mn viewers between 2010 and 2012: FCC

MUMBAI: According to recently released FCC data from their annual report on cable industry competition, the cable industry lost roughly 2.5 million video subscribers between 2010 and 2012. According to the FCC, cable operators laid claim to 57.3 million pay TV subscribers at the end of 2012, down from 59.8 million in 2010.

Most of these customers flocked to telcoTV, with AT&T U-Verse increasing their subscriber total from three million to 4.1 million between 2010 and 2012, and Verizon FiOS’s total subscriber total going from 3.5 million to 4.5 million during the same stretch. Verizon and AT&T recently announced they’ve both passed the five million cable TV subscriber mark, giving them more TV customers than all but the nation’s two largest traditional cable companies: Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Cord cutters make up a very small but growing part of the equation as well, with even the industry’s biggest cord cutting deniers now acknowledging the glacial but inevitable trend toward less expensive internet options for many users.

Meanwhile, the FCC report also pointed out that the soaring costs of programming is slowly but surely driving many of the nation’s smaller cable operators out of business. “800 cable systems serving over 35,000 subscribers have closed mostly in small and rural communities, leaving those communities without any wireline MVPD (cable video) service,” claims the report.

August 21, 2013
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts extends contract through June 2014

MUMBAI: Comcast chief executive Brian L. Roberts has extended his tenure at one of the largest cable company – for at least another year.

Roberts isn’t planning on going anywhere – despite the seemingly short-term nature of the deal. His father, Ralph Roberts, founded the company half a century ago. What’s more, Brian Roberts’ employment contract had expired last month, according a filing Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Rather than renegotiate his entire agreement, Roberts simply amended the pact so that it runs through June 2014. He did not negotiate any other modifications to the existing agreement, the filing said.

This is not the first time Roberts, 54, has extended his agreement beyond its expected expiration. The current agreement took effect 1 January, 2005.

Roberts last year received a compensation package from Comcast valued at $29 million, up eight per cent from 2011.

July 28, 2013
Tata Elxsi unveils RDK system integration program

BENGALURU: Leveraging its extensive and global experience from engagements with leading MSOs, OEMs and SoC vendors, Tata Elxsi has unveiled its latest system integration program for the deployment of the RDK (reference design kit) platform from Comcast.

As an RDK System Integrator, Tata Elxsi will assist operators in determining specific requirements, integration, application development, pre/post testing and deployment in an efficient and cost effective manner.

RDK is a pre-integrated software bundle that creates a common framework for powering tru2way, IP or hybrid set-top boxes and gateway devices and accelerates the development and deployment of next-generation video services. Comcast licenses the RDK to OEMs, SIs, SOCs, software vendors as well as MVPDs to create a community of innovators focused on bringing rich, multi-screen TV home entertainment experiences to consumers faster.

The RDK offers a cloud-based platform for application development and requires neither platform specific implementation nor download. Thus it enables operators to easily deploy & upgrade applications in their network and ensure a consistent user experience in contrast to traditional middleware.

As an open platform, the RDK allows application developers to benefit from the vast expertise of the open source community, facilitating easier implementation and faster turnaround.

“As an RDK licensee, Tata Elxsi is pleased and excited to be an active promoter of the RDK and provides a comprehensive set of services to SoC Vendors, OEMs and MSOs help adopt and implement RDK based devices and services,” said Tata Elxsi EVP Manoj Raghavan.

June 26, 2013
Big 4 control 64% of global internet ad market; Google is largest media owner-ZenithOptimedia report

MUMBAI: Despite the apparent low barriers to entry, the internet ad market is highly polarised and just four companies control 64 per cent of all global expenditure. The four internet media owners -Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! generated $49.2 billion in revenue from internet advertising in 2011, out of the total $77 billion spent on internet advertising around the world.

Google alone accounted for 49 per cent of the world‘s internet ad expenditure, while Yahoo! in 15th position accounted for six per cent and Microsoft and Facebook at 26th and 27th positions respectively accounted for four per cent each.

Google‘s media revenues of $37.9 billion made it the world‘s largest media owner according to ZenithOptimedia‘s Top Thirty Global Media Owners report. The search and digital advertising giant moved up from second position and now boasts media revenues that are 39 per cent higher than its nearest competitor DirecTV.

News Corp, Disney, Comcast, CBS and BSkyB also made the list, while a notable exception, Twitter, with revenues of $140 million failed to make it to this group for the period of the report.

The Top Thirty Global Media Owners report is a ranking of the world‘s largest media companies by media revenue as estimated by ZenithOptimedia. The latest report covers financial year 2011. The Top Thirty Global Media Owners report was launched in 2007 and was last published by ZenithOptimedia in 2010. ZenithOptimedia defines media revenue as all revenue deriving from businesses that support advertising, not just the ad revenue itself.

Despite the rise of digital media, the majority of media revenues were generated by traditional media and entertainment companies that create and distribute content. Of the Top Thirty global media owners, 22 were companies whose main business is to attract audiences with strong content, which remains fundamental to generating media revenues. Six of the top 10 media owners during the period were content producers, including third-placed News Corp and fourth-placed Disney. Between them, these 22 generated $169 billion in media revenue in 2011, or 61 per cent of the total generated by the Top Thirty.

Since the agency last published ranking in 2010, five companies have entered the ranks of the Top Thirty: Facebook, Microsoft, Globo, ProSiebenSat.1 and Sanoma. The entrance of Facebook and Microsoft demonstrates the growing dominance of internet advertising, which now accounts for 20 per cent of global ad expenditure. Facebook has spearheaded the explosive growth of social media advertising across the world, which is currently growing at about 28 per cent a year, while Microsoft has benefited from the slower but still rapid growth of paid search and traditional display, which are growing at about 13 per cent a year.

Although China is now the third largest ad market, the Top Thirty ranking does not currently include any companies from China, where media ownership is highly fragmented. However, the report says that Baidu, China‘s leading search engine only just missed out on a place this time, and is a likely candidate for inclusion next year, while the national broadcaster CCTV won‘t be far behind.

ZenithOptimedia‘s Top Thirty ranking for 2011 includes four digital media owners, and it expects that there to be at least one more next year. It also expects more media owners from other rising markets to join the two Latin American media owners in the top thirty.

The driving force behind Google‘s success is its search algorithm, which has been by far the most successful at delivering search results that consumers want and monetising them through paid search advertising.

No other company has been able to compete effectively in each segment of the digital ad market. The agency estimates that Google attracts 15 per cent of global display advertising, including traditional display, online video and social media, supplementing its 82 per cent share of search.

With the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft‘s flagship operating system has become an advertising platform for the first time; the next couple of years will show what effect, if any, this will have on Microsoft‘s ranking.

For ZenithOptimedia‘s Top Thirty list click here
http://www.indiantelevision.com/mam/headlines/y2k13/jun/ZenithOptimedia.php

June 4, 2013