You know, sometimes when a company gets huge it’s because it consistently makes the right calls. The largest of all cable companies, Comcast, makes a lot of those, so it’s no shock that they hit a bull’s-eye regarding OTT application development.
Multichannel News recently reported on Comcast’s plans to deliver its Xfinity On Demand VOD service through the Xbox 360 this year, as well as its desire to bring its VOD offerings to PlayStation3, Wii, connected TVs and Roku.
The logical conclusion would be that Comcast wants to bring VOD to every “connected” product out there, and indeed, Sam Schwartz, president of Comcast Converged Products is quoted, “We want to be on screens that consumers want us to be on.” But that’s where it gets interesting.
Because there’s a limit on how ubiquitous even a large company like Comcast could or should be. And that limit is due to platform chaos.
The article says that “Comcast won’t try to emulate Netflix, which makes its service available on more than 200 consumer-electronics devices, because of the expense of maintaining all those platforms.” And it further quotes Schwartz: “I don’t envy Netflix’s maintenance task. What people don’t realize is, once you port to a platform, you’re going to have to live with that device for a long time.”
I’ve been saying exactly that for a long time. For example, here, and here, a little bit here, and what do ya know, here as well. So it’s nice to know that I’m on the same page as an industry leader like Comcast.
Because Comcast is focusing on a few platforms rather than many, it will be able to focus on the important things, like a rich navigation experience. “There’s almost a Chinese wall between the grid, VOD and DVR,” Schwartz tells MCN. “[Xfinity On Demand provides] one, user-centric view of the content.”
Of course, Comcast could take another step forward and embrace a cloud-based HTML5 app platform that enables it to write its Xfinity On Demand app once and potentially run it anywhere.
It’s the next logical step. In fact, I’d say it’s a Comcastic idea.
