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Television

Comcast and Charter Team Up in Hopes of Toppling Roku, Amazon Streaming Hardware (theverge.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
As the old saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, partner up with another overly powerful cable giant to give yourself a better shot. From a report: This morning, Comcast and Charter announced a new joint venture that will see the two companies teaming up to develop "a next-generation streaming platform on a variety of branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs." This new platform and the devices that run it will square off against Amazon, Roku, Google, Apple, and other established streaming hardware players. The new venture is evenly divided between the two companies and is exclusively focused on streaming; it "does not involve the broadband or cable video businesses of either Comcast or Charter, which will remain independent." Comcast says its Flex streaming platform will serve as the foundation for what's coming next. It's also contributing "the retail business for XClass TVs and will contribute Xumo, a streaming service it acquired in 2020." Comcast introduced its XClass TVs last year as an alternative to the many popular budget TVs that come preloaded with Roku, Amazon, or Google software. For its part, Charter -- known better to many for its Spectrum brand -- is kicking in $900 million over the course of several years.
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Comcast and Charter Team Up in Hopes of Toppling Roku, Amazon Streaming Hardware More

Comcast and Charter Team Up in Hopes of Toppling Roku, Amazon Streaming Hardware

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  • Checkmate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:14PM (#62484622) Journal
    ...and then charge $50/month to rent equipment that Roku charges $35 to own.

    • and ... Charter will make you sign into your cable provider to watch everything so you can pay even more!

      I am sticking with the Apple TV, but thanks!

      Attention SPECTRUM, your best bet would be a high quality App for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and MAC. Take a hint from Disney and Amazon prime streaming. Amazon's premium streaming is now done on Apple TV, not the firestick or whatever it's called. Disney+ did not develop it's own hardware but has a good app that isn't annoying.

      This unholy alliance will produce

    • And much much worse quality. Like when TiVo and ReplayTV came out, all the cable companies decided to make competing products that were worse in every single way. But better for the executives maybe. Like being unable to skip or fast forward past commercials. And of course a UI designed by the CEO's nephew who was still in middle school. And your recording might be time limited. It was almost as if they refused to make a useful product and instead designed something to punish those would dare time shi

  • I don't need more crap from them, I need them to do their job well. That job is making sure I have reliable service. Don't need you hawking devices at me for streaming too. I'm sure they'll be pushing these, then offering them for "rent" like they do for modems.

    My Roku works perfectly fine so thanks but no thanks.

    • We need reliability data published for all users. Companies won't do more than the bare minimum, and then lie about it.

      Also we need a way to allow competing companies to use the public spaces they've been handed. I think we should ask them what they'd charge others to use the spaces. Then create an agency that charges them that much to use the existing spaces. Then open up the areas for multiple providers. Create a utility for standard service.

      • Of course, capitalism won the economic war against socialism. However to be more accurate, the bad parts of capitalism won (monopolies, rent seeking, short term focus) whereas the good parts of capitalism died (competition to try to make better products more efficiently, providing better service as a value added feature, treating the customer as a valued asset).

    • Roku is a Comcast customer (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      People have no idea how large Comcast is. No matter how you think you’re cutting the cord or cutting them out they’re usually involved somewhere.

  • First thing to do is to get their names off the bo (Score:3)

    by tekram ( 8023518 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:19PM (#62484636)
    ..off of the box. Realistically, who would want to use a box from these two if they had the choice?

  • Xfinity have way too many user device possibilities, each with different capabilities and limits. And using their cable box is always a bad experience for me. Slow, cramped UI. Doesn't give me what I want in a format I can use, nor lets me change what it gives.

    Netflix has been better in that the UI is simple, and functional for a lot of people. It aims to give users what they want without much fuss from them.

    Can't imagine the combined cable companies are going to change their MO. Without the literal mo

    • I can't stand the phone type interface all these appliances have. All my streaming is done through a browser on a small form factor desktop running Ubuntu. For local files VLC is the player of choice. I tried one of the ARM boards (that does 4k60 in hardware) with Kodi or Liberelec or whatever they call themselves because everyone was saying how great and configurable it was.

      It looked and acted exactly like the other garbage. You had three different places to change settings or add sources and it took readi

  • If Spectrum will remove its streaming app from competing ecosystems once this releases? I don't have cable or access to OTA channels and the streaming service is much cheaper than even basic cable. I hope they keep the Spectrum app on Roku so I can still catch my locals.

  • Not a chance. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Revek ( 133289 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:23PM (#62484654)
    1. The reason is simple. Lets call it cable think. Cable think created TV Everywhere. A hodge podge streaming service that had no real standards and no direct support if you had a problem. It involved everything that is wrong with the cable industry. Comcast and charter will hang so many self defeating requirements on it in some effort to stop someone from stealing it will make Netflix look like a utopia. Their fear is someone might watch a rerun of Sanford and son they don't get paid for it. 2. Cable think is why all cable approved products fail. Look at HDHomerun. I still have one somewhere. I couldn't get it working right and I was the sysadmin for the cable company where I was using it. It had so much DRM attached it was useless. I'm sure I could find other examples but as long as they keep clinging to their horse and buggy idea about streaming it will never work.

  • When I know that charter and comcast suck, they will also probably offer a subscription or with a cable\internet package whereas roku is free. They also will probably fail to get a good product, because they only care about themselves as a corporate entity(ies), and could care less about customers. I guess they could try and force people to install their modules.

    Another thing is they are going to be behind in UI and other tech areas so it could be a barrier to entry for them. I predict failure, but hey, it

  • Is yet another box that cant beat the 25 foot HDMI cable running from my PC to the TV.

    • Or another box to sit on top of another big box, that plugs into my wifi/router box. When my (at the time) $20 firestick has been admirably streaming my Netflix, etc for 4 years now.

      Also Amazon won't try and charge me $4.99/mo for the firestick.

      • Yet!
        Once Microsoft start making Windows a monthly license and starts getting away with it because of course they can, they will start charging a monthly fee.

    • Is yet another box that cant beat the 25 foot HDMI cable running from my PC to the TV.

      Streaming sticks/boxes are almost as cheap as long ass HDMI cords at this point. Walmart [walmart.com] has a 4K Android TV box for $20, and it's actually not bad.

      That's what really doesn't make sense about cable companies getting into the streaming box biz - the race to the bottom has already been run and the bottom has been reached. Maybe the cable companies should instead get into the electric car business, where there's still a chance of making some actual profit.

      • Android is not nearly as capable as Desktop OS. Not worth the money.
        I guess if you are an idiot and/or don't like to think.

        • Android TV works fine as a thin client if you really want to use a desktop OS remotely for whatever reason. When I'm at staring at a TV though, it's to watch movies/shows, so being able to run Kodi covers my use case.

          Furthermore, I've got 4 TVs in my household. Full-fat PCs hooked up to each TV would be completely impractical. Cheap streaming boxes are a godsend.

  • ...to counter. Oligopolies are just lovely, aren't they: lack of choice, bad service, and forced bundling = Cable 2.0.

  • I've used Xfinity for years and years. Extremely reliable and very fast internet. I'd say their reliability for me has been at about 3 nines. Which for a home internet provider is amazeballs. I pay for 250meg down and my speed tests run around 280-290. Ping times are fantastic. From what I read on the internet they are the worst to ever worst, but again I guess I'm lucky because they've been good to me. 1000% better than Century Link and their unholy DSL crapitude. Holy moly they were awful.
    • Comcast/Xfinity has generally worked well for me for several years. Just as importantly for me, they've supported IPv6 for several years and don't block any incoming ports, so I get a "real" (not crippled) Internet connection.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      I was a loyal customer until the data caps hit. Their service was fine, the only real issue I ever had with them was getting signed up. (They randomly shut down my account because my phone number turned up on another account. Took me 3 hours on the phone to sort out.) That, and the annual call to them to get my new "introductory rate". I was perfectly willing to look past those issues, but I'll be damned before I pay for busting a data cap.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Creepy ( 93888 )

      Sad part is they are like 25% cheaper than T-Mobiie during their introductory period, require their more expensive than any other TV package bundle, and don't disclose fees - oh, and aren't unlimited. So yeah, are like 50% higher cost in general. Comcastic. Fuck You, Comcast. If you want to talk about your ~$500%+ that like 2% of companies can afford and cost business rates over anyone else, sure, I'm game. Yeah, your my only provider, and $500 for 200Mbps is my only business option unless I move a mile awa

  • Nothing New (Score:3)

    by sizzlinkitty ( 1199479 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:49PM (#62484750)

    I'm a ex Charter employee and can tell you that these types of partnerships are normal business for Charter. They do it mostly under the name of Cable Labs but also outside of that they collaborate with each other to ensure services don't infringe on each others foot print and to guarantee customers have limited options.

  • Internet killed the video star / in my mind and in my heart / we can't go back we've gone too far

    When the Comcast lady asked me 3 years ago why I am returning my cable box I told her "Reality TV"

    Content creators would be better served by making better content, not more convoluted ways to sneak into our pockets to liberate our dollars. I"m tired of being preached at 24/7 everywhere I look that I'm wrong, my kind is wrong, and all that. You spout that shit at me, I will deny you my $, in a heartbeat.

    This se

  • I'd rather go without than support Comcast or Charter. Dear Cable Companies, you treated everyone like shit for years, have fun dying.

    • They won't die, the government will bail them out 100x, over and over again because they're considered critical infrastructure. They provide a method of disseminating information to the majority of America. Cable TV, Land Line, Cellular, Internet... the only methods they don't control is print media, word of mouth, and radio broadcasts... everything else is something they deliver to consumers.

      I used to write the reports for DHS consumption when Charter would have any outage due to security incidents.

    • They’re doing things in the background for most major cable, satellite, and video streaming services all around the world.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Net Neutrality (Score:3)

    by Chameleon Man ( 1304729 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @03:01PM (#62484916)
    This is what Net Neutrality advocates have warned about. With no guardrails in place, Comcast and Charter can throttle and stamp out competition in the streaming space. The can easily move in and dominate, then oligopolize. Support Net Neutrality regulation, folks.

  • Two garbage trucks backing into each other (Score:3)

    by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @03:25PM (#62484964)

    (Famous Scott McNealy quote about HP acquiring Compaq.) To be honest, this also reminds me of Sperry and Burroughs merging into Unisys, which rapidly sunk with nary a ripple.

    The only way for this joint venture to be successful is if it's really untethered from the cable businesses, which means there's really no point in Comcast or Charter being involved. I'm sure there will be immediate conversations of the form "yeah, we'll support everyone but for Comcast and Charter, there will be this special feature..." and those special features will cripple the dev teams.

    Many moons ago I worked at an unnamed computer company. We could clearly see which way the technology was trending but were forced to support, first and foremost, our own internally-invented tech ("to support the other parts of the business"). Turned out to be a terrible idea because no one wanted what we were selling and it crippled other product lines.

  • $9.99/mo to rent an $100-$250 box

  • First, giving the Cable Companies any sort of vertical monopoly is a bad thing, they've shown that they will abuse the situation if they have no competition. However they are going to fail because they are in their own way. They will hamstring themselves because developing a solid digital presence will involve the loss of some streams of revenue.. So they wont take the important steps of moving their alluring content into the streaming area. And they are going to hold on to commercials.

    I tried the

  • I mean, this is a bit like seeing a news report saying Satan and Hitler have teamed up to sell orange juice. No one's going to want to buy it from them.

  • Roku share price is way down.

  • Amazon streaming service also good idea . imho

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