Whatever Happened to Cox & Comcast OnDemand Support on Retail TiVos?

Posted on Thursday, October 13, 2011 by MegaZone

TiVo Logo I see these questions pop up repeatedly on pretty much every TiVo-related forum around the net. Where is the promised OnDemand support for retail TiVos? Short answer: It’s coming.

I’ll tackle the second one first, Comcast. For this one I think people just aren’t paying attention. This was announced back in May, and ever since people have been asking when? Which doesn’t make much sense, as the announcement says when and where we’ll see it!

These statements by Comcast and TiVo relate to, among other things, the future integration, availability and promotion of Xfinity TV On Demand Service on TiVo Premiere set-top boxes in select markets with the first expected market to be San Francisco Bay Area early next year and availability in additional markets after that.

OK, so it is hidden in the fine print, but it is there. Elsewhere Comcast made statements that the first customers may see pilot deployments around the end of the year. So either way we shouldn’t expect anything until around the end of the year, and then it’ll be a limited deployment for a while I’d bet. Deploy to one area, shake things out, then expand. But as Comcast is bringing Xfinity TV On Demand to a number of platforms this isn’t an effort unique to TiVo. What’d be really interesting is if Comcast sold some kind of OTT subscription so non-Comcast customers could access Comcast OnDemand. That’d be radical.

And just in case you think Comcast might be backing out, they just mentioned this in a filing with the FCC:

We are working with TiVo on a solution to deliver Xfinity On Demand to TiVo CableCARD devices. We are aiming to start trialing the service later this year.

So be patient.

Now, what about Cox? The deal with Cox was announced way back in August, 2010 and since then both parties have been pretty much silent on the progress, if any. This has led to increasing speculation that the deal collapsed and both parties were just ignoring it. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. Thanks to a comment on InvestorVillage I was alerted to a comment posted on the DSL Reports Forums by a Cox employee in July:

As far as TiVo Premier goes, it is still an active project, but we don’t have a launch date to announce yet.

One comment from Cox in July not enough? Well on Tuesday TiVo responded to a comment on Facebook:

We are working with Cox to enable their VOD on the TiVo Premiere. As soon as we have more information on timing we will update the page!

It is certainly taking a while, but I’m not that surprised. IP-enabling OnDemand isn’t a trivial task. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be more work than Cox & TiVo expected. But I’m glad to see the work continues.

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
This entry was posted in Cable, DVR, TiVo and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • Fanfoot

    If you’re waiting for unbundled VOD access from Comcast I think you’ll be waiting a while.  There are other things to look for first.  Comcast has discussed for example providing ways for you to access sports programming from another market by paying an additional fee. I would think at first this would require you to be a Comcast customer in both cities. But eventually something like this might be the first crack in this space since people would likely pay good money for a channel like this. Of course it may well take so long for them to get this done that by the time they do other means like NFL Red Zone or whatever, packages from the sports franchises may have been available for a while and already have a foothold.

  • Fanfoot

    If you’re waiting for unbundled VOD access from Comcast I think you’ll be waiting a while.  There are other things to look for first.  Comcast has discussed for example providing ways for you to access sports programming from another market by paying an additional fee. I would think at first this would require you to be a Comcast customer in both cities. But eventually something like this might be the first crack in this space since people would likely pay good money for a channel like this. Of course it may well take so long for them to get this done that by the time they do other means like NFL Red Zone or whatever, packages from the sports franchises may have been available for a while and already have a foothold.

  • Fanfoot

    If you’re waiting for unbundled VOD access from Comcast I think you’ll be waiting a while.  There are other things to look for first.  Comcast has discussed for example providing ways for you to access sports programming from another market by paying an additional fee. I would think at first this would require you to be a Comcast customer in both cities. But eventually something like this might be the first crack in this space since people would likely pay good money for a channel like this. Of course it may well take so long for them to get this done that by the time they do other means like NFL Red Zone or whatever, packages from the sports franchises may have been available for a while and already have a foothold.

  • Fanfoot

    If you’re waiting for unbundled VOD access from Comcast I think you’ll be waiting a while.  There are other things to look for first.  Comcast has discussed for example providing ways for you to access sports programming from another market by paying an additional fee. I would think at first this would require you to be a Comcast customer in both cities. But eventually something like this might be the first crack in this space since people would likely pay good money for a channel like this. Of course it may well take so long for them to get this done that by the time they do other means like NFL Red Zone or whatever, packages from the sports franchises may have been available for a while and already have a foothold.

  • Fanfoot

    If you’re waiting for unbundled VOD access from Comcast I think you’ll be waiting a while.  There are other things to look for first.  Comcast has discussed for example providing ways for you to access sports programming from another market by paying an additional fee. I would think at first this would require you to be a Comcast customer in both cities. But eventually something like this might be the first crack in this space since people would likely pay good money for a channel like this. Of course it may well take so long for them to get this done that by the time they do other means like NFL Red Zone or whatever, packages from the sports franchises may have been available for a while and already have a foothold.

  • Fanfoot

    If you’re waiting for unbundled VOD access from Comcast I think you’ll be waiting a while.  There are other things to look for first.  Comcast has discussed for example providing ways for you to access sports programming from another market by paying an additional fee. I would think at first this would require you to be a Comcast customer in both cities. But eventually something like this might be the first crack in this space since people would likely pay good money for a channel like this. Of course it may well take so long for them to get this done that by the time they do other means like NFL Red Zone or whatever, packages from the sports franchises may have been available for a while and already have a foothold.

  • Fanfoot

    If you’re waiting for unbundled VOD access from Comcast I think you’ll be waiting a while.  There are other things to look for first.  Comcast has discussed for example providing ways for you to access sports programming from another market by paying an additional fee. I would think at first this would require you to be a Comcast customer in both cities. But eventually something like this might be the first crack in this space since people would likely pay good money for a channel like this. Of course it may well take so long for them to get this done that by the time they do other means like NFL Red Zone or whatever, packages from the sports franchises may have been available for a while and already have a foothold.

  • Fanfoot

    If you’re waiting for unbundled VOD access from Comcast I think you’ll be waiting a while.  There are other things to look for first.  Comcast has discussed for example providing ways for you to access sports programming from another market by paying an additional fee. I would think at first this would require you to be a Comcast customer in both cities. But eventually something like this might be the first crack in this space since people would likely pay good money for a channel like this. Of course it may well take so long for them to get this done that by the time they do other means like NFL Red Zone or whatever, packages from the sports franchises may have been available for a while and already have a foothold.

  • Fanfoot

    If you’re waiting for unbundled VOD access from Comcast I think you’ll be waiting a while.  There are other things to look for first.  Comcast has discussed for example providing ways for you to access sports programming from another market by paying an additional fee. I would think at first this would require you to be a Comcast customer in both cities. But eventually something like this might be the first crack in this space since people would likely pay good money for a channel like this. Of course it may well take so long for them to get this done that by the time they do other means like NFL Red Zone or whatever, packages from the sports franchises may have been available for a while and already have a foothold.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=559539146 Andrew J Wees

    well Comcast launched it and no new news from Cox who announced first.  Doesn’t look good.

    • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

      It doesn’t really mean anything.  I’ve seen it so many times I don’t even pay attention anymore.  It isn’t unusual for company A to announce something followed by company B, and then B comes to market before A.  It happens all the time and it doesn’t really mean anything – good or bad.

      Comcast and Cox were the two companies who partnered with TiVo on the ‘soft-TiVo’ effort a few years back.  And on that effort the same thing happened.  Cox let Comcast go to trials first before starting their own, then they let Comcast deploy first.  And since the Comcast deployment ran into issues and ended up stalling out, and eventually was cancelled, Cox never deployed.

      Comcast is *much* larger than Cox, with a lot more resources and much deeper pockets.  My feeling is that once Comcast got into the picture and made the same deal, Cox decided to pull back and let them take the lead.  Let Comcast fund the development – it is the same software in the TiVo – and debug the deployment, etc.  Then Cox can walk in and benefit from all of Comcast’s work.

      It also gives Cox more time to update their head end systems – required to deploy this.  And it isn’t like they’re competitors, so it doesn’t hurt Cox at all to allow Comcast to go first.

      From what I’m hearing this effort is still active, but there are no public time lines.  To me the evidence indicates Cox is just letting Comcast walk through the minefield before following in their footsteps.