Comcast, in an effort to leverage the online video market, intends to launch a service called OnDemand Online later this year. According to several sources including The Wall Street Journal, cnet, and The Business Insider, Comcast is not directly going after Hulu, since OnDemand Online will be primarily focused on providing access to new content from cable networks that is not currently available online. Details are still being worked out, but it looks like most of the content will be free if you are a Comcast subscriber, but they’re not ruling out the possibility of “pay-per-view” content. You are not required to use a Comcast internet connection to use this service, but you do have to live in an area where you can subscribe to Comcast cable. Basically this means that if you live in an area where you can normally get Comcast TV, you can access OnDemand Online from any internet connection you want. But if you live outside the “Comcast Zone”, you cannot subscribe to this service at all. Go figure.
Another interesting detail about this service is how it will affect your bandwith-cap (for those of you who don’t know, Comcast started enforcing a bandwidth cap of 250Gb per month on most internet connections). Despite this on-demand video being a Comcast service, it still counts against your monthly bandwidth-cap just as any other online video would. This may be fine for a single person using both their internet connection for both surfing and the OnDemand Online service, but you might start seeing some serious issues when you have multiple people surfing the web and watching online (especially high definition) content from the same connection.
Bottom line, I think there are still a lot of details that need to be flushed out. Its nice to see more companies offering their content online, but I’ll be interested to see how much that content will end up costing the customer.
Comments