Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Today I came home to find my 15 MB down/3 MB up Comcast broadband service had been shut off due to exceeding their 250 GB/month data cap policy. This had happened the month before, and I called and had a polite but irritated conversation with Comcast's "Customer Security" department (since the regular customer service folks could not help.) According to them I had exceeded their 250 GB monthly cap, and they asked how that might have happened."

Whoa boy. I read this story with a grimace on my face. On the one hand, you have Comcast's completely over-the-top reaction to a customer blowing his data usage cap two months in a row: total account termination. That's just insane. That's the sort of extreme measure you take if your customer was doing something illegal or unethical. Going over a data usage cap? Bill the customer extra, but don't terminate his account. Read more...

"The nation's leading cable company has made no secret of its disdain for Hulu's approach of giving away the shows that Comcast and other pay-TV distributors spend billions for -- and rely on to retain subscribers. Comcast is in talks with NBC Universal about pooling their entertainment assets into a new company that would own 30% of Hulu in addition to the NBC network and cable channels such as Bravo, E! and Syfy. Comcast would control the new entity and possibly have the clout to push Hulu to begin charging for access to some of its most popular shows, including "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" or "Psych.""

Like my previous post suggested, I've always assumed Hulu would become a pay service at some point. The question for me was whether they took the true a la carte approach that so many consumers have wanted or just became another version of Comcast. If they do become a pay service, they really need to make sure that it is easier to get the content on your TV (like service for the Wii, PS3, and Roku box) as well as making nice with Apple to get on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

"Time Warner and Comcast have joined hands in order to regain control on some of the content that is slipping right out from under 'em. In the olden days, the only portal for catching content was the 'tube; today, a vast array of television shows are available gratis on the web, and that's downright frightening for pay-TV operators. Today, both firms are detailing TV Everywhere in the most general way possible, only telling us that paying Comcast subscribers will soon have access to "premium long-form content" via a web portal. TNT and TBS are the only networks specifically named thus far, but considering that both of those already offer their best programming online to everyone, we're not terribly impressed."

I'm thinking cable networks are going to start getting desperate. Hulu, Netflix, and DTV offer a much cheaper alternative than even basic cable. Unfortunately, giving subscribers what they can already get for free elsewhere will probably do little to help solve this problem.