And including other people’s content on their web portal doesn’t count.  That’s just capturing eyeballs when you’re already on the web on your laptop.  TV playback is clearly different, both contractually and seemingly in terms of how they view it competitively.

RCN has stated numerous times that they want to offer Netflix to their customers.  Charter has stated that they want to offer Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix to customers.  They’re already incorporating them into their web based content portal.

Grande Communications is apparently offering Amazon Instant Video to their users.

The issue with Netflix is contractual – on Netflix’s side.  They said the contracts with the content owners precludes them from streaming to MSO-provided boxes.

I’m not sure what the issue is with Amazon.  It was thought they had the same issue, but if Grande really is providing Amazon content that’s new.  So it isn’t clear why other MSOs who say they would like to provide Amazon aren’t.

As usual it isn’t whether Motorola can develop something that would “delight consumers” (though of course I’d have some questions about the chance of that happening), but whether MSOs would roll it out even if Motorola did develop it.

Most of the OTT things that consumers would actually want on their cable STBs (Hulu Plus, Netflix, Amazon On Demand, HBO Go, Crackle etc) is directly competitive with the MSOs own offerings.  So typically even when some capability has been available on say a Tivo box, when the box is deployed at an MSO, the capability gets disabled.  If you get used to watching Hulu Plus a lot rather than the MSO’s own VOD service, you might figure out you could get buy without the cable company entirely.  They can’t have that.

So sure they’ll talk about “Internet Video” but what they mean is things like YouTube, and not so much that long form content that is what you’re really looking for.

But hey, I could be wrong.  Maybe at some point the defections to Verizon, AT&T, Dish and DirecTV and their constant low consumer ratings will have some kind of impact on these companies.

But I won’t be holding my breath waiting.  But hey, I didn’t think the iPad stuff would happen at anywhere near the speed it did, so what do I know?