--Trial is Part of "TV Everywhere" Initiative, Announced by Comcast and Time Warner Last Month
Just days after announcing a similar deal with Starz Entertainment (see article published on itvt.com, July 13th), Comcast, the US's largest cable MSO, announced Monday that Home Box Office's HBO and Cinemax premium programming services will make a selection of their content available online, at no extra charge, to their subscribers who are also Comcast customers, under the auspices of the MSO's recently announced trial of a service called On Demand Online. On Demand Online was announced last month as part of an agreement between Comcast and HBO parent, Time Warner, to develop "broad principles" for the so-called "TV Everywhere" distribution model (note: the "TV Everywhere" model, which has long been championed by Time Warner and its chairman and CEO, Jeff Bewkes, seeks to make programming that pay-TV customers have already paid for through their cable, satellite or IPTV subscriptions available to those customers on multiple platforms, and thus aims to head off the threat posed to pay-TV services by the increasing availability of over-the-top programming--for more background, see the articles published on itvt.com, April 30th, May 14th and June 25th).
According to Comcast, HBO and Cinemax will initially provide a combined total of 750 hours of programming per month for the On Demand Online trial, and the amount of programming will increase over time. The programming, which will be available through Comcast's Comcast.net and Fancast.com broadband video sites to the approximately 5,000 customers from across the US who are participating in the On Demand Online trial, will include full episodes of current and classic HBO series, such as "True Blood," "Entourage," "The Sopranos," "Sex and the City," and "Curb Your Enthusiasm"; newer movies such as "Brokeback Mountain," "Transformers" and "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who"; classic movies such as "Big" and "Rosemary's Baby"; and HBO Family programming, such as "Harold and the Purple Crayon." According to Comcast, HBO's and Cinemax's On Demand Online programming offerings will be updated frequently, and will include a number of titles in HD. Certain new programs will be available online immediately after they air on linear TV, the company says. "HBO is an iconic brand with award-winning original programming and exclusive feature films and we are thrilled they are joining us in our mission to make our services available online to our customers," Matt Bond, Comcast's EVP of content acquisition, said in a prepared statement. "For the first time HBO and Cinemax customers around the country will be able to watch their favorite shows and movies online at no additional cost. This agreement is an important milestone in our long-term strategy of enabling customers to watch popular television and movie content when and where they want it."
The On Demand Online trial is designed primarily to test Comcast's new "authentication" technology, which is intended to restrict online access to pay-TV content to customers who have already paid for that content. The MSO says that On Demand Online will use a simple log-on system for streaming content and that, in the future, the service will allow customers to download content to go. The service is slated to be rolled out in phases, adding new features, functionality and content over time. Last month, it was announced that the On Demand Online trial will also make available content from Time Warner's TNT and TBS channels; in addition, a number of other programmers--including Rainbow Media's AMC, Sundance Channel, IFC and WE TV channels; Scripps Networks; and A&E Television Networks--recently confirmed to Multichannel News's Todd Spangler that they plan to participate in the trial.
