Comcast launched Fancast at CES today. The site, which we first mentioned in April, serves as both a media guide for TV shows and movies, as well as a destination to watch full length and preview clips of professional content.
Fancast partnered with Hulu to offer content from NBC and Fox, in addition to content from CBS, MTV, and BET. If Fancast doesn’t stream the full-length content you are looking for, it will help you look for that content on television, on DVD, in theaters, or even elsewhere on the web (iTunes, Amazon, Blockbuster, or Netflix). While this will be helpful for people who genuinely want to access content in different formats, the TV guide type features are a stopgap for many of us who would like to see everything streamed online.
Other aspects of Fancast make it much like IMDB; you can check out information about casts and crews, review information about past episodes, and look at related photos. Users are also promised the ability to control their DVR online so they can schedule recordings of shows when they are away from home. Furthermore, the service will recommend shows coming up on television that it thinks you might like to see.
According to NewTeeVee, Fancast is part of Comcast’s “Project Infinity” initiative and should in time find itself integrated with set top boxes. Comcast has partnered with TiVo and is negotiating with Time Warner and Cox.
So this is Hulu and Joost all in one site. Why go or use either of their services now with this?
If you only watch a few shows and can now watch through this why pay for cable?
“If you only watch a few shows and can now watch through this why pay for cable?”
The cable guys have crying for a long time. We are not there yet but in time they will need to join the revolution or pay the ultimate price.
We sold them the FanCast name more than a year ago, they were fairly hush, hush on their strategy. Interesting…
Dunder Mifflinfinity.
““If you only watch a few shows and can now watch through this why pay for cable?”
The cable guys have crying for a long time. We are not there yet but in time they will need to join the revolution or pay the ultimate price.”
Uh, this IS the revolution - comcast is one of the biggest cable companies in America.
All of these stories have started to bore me to tears now that I have hooked up my Playstation 3’s media player to my torrent-downloading PC.
This is a really interesting position for Comcast. Combine this with their Pivot mobile service, and you have a rich media experience on PC/TV/Mobile. This is cool stuff. They have been very hush hush about this. I think that this eventually means bad things for some of the mobile TV players (MobiTV…watch out) and this provides real competition to network websites, Joost, and even iTunes. Comcast should never be underestimated.
This site supports Comcast Broadband business…but what about the cable side? It does not take much imagination to see Fancast be available from the same Panasonic TV that will make some Google offering available in the Spring. That definitiely would impact the cable business. Maybe Comcast has decided that is ok…sot the $70/month for cable and the $40/month for bb get combined to $100/month for both?
More interesting than its impact on consumers will be the impact on those content providers that Comcast pays to have their content (ESPN etc) and on those content providers that pay Comcast for cable carriage (QVC & HSN etc).
The Comcast and other cableco role as gatekeeper/tollbooth for cable and broadband is not necessarily weakened by this.
@5
I think you misunderstood my point. Comcast is getting on board but the others who don’t will pay the price.
oh, in that case, you don’t really have a point. It’s like if Microsoft got on the open source wagon and then you said THE OTHERS STILL NEED TOO - Microsoft themselves getting on would be the “revolution”
So if this has everything from Hulu, why visit Hulu? Other than a better interface, of course.
If Project Infinity is to succeed, Comcast must deliver a better value proposition for the content producers than the one it had on the table before regarding on demand content. That business model, which is essentially to pay them for their content once and use it – and charge for it – as many times as possible - has resulted in few takers and only about 300 on demand titles accessible via their TV platform. It’s a pretty cool concept if the studios play ball, but how this all gets sorted will make or break its success, regardless of how many eyeballs Fancast attracts. Let’s hope that Project Infinity does not come to be known as the length of time needed to make that happen.
For more on this, see my blog: http://www.thecatalystcode.com.....-new-plan/
If you don’t have access to hulu, you can watch all the videos on facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/a.....6443058041
And chat with your friends while watching.
Watch full episodes and create your personalized channel at http://www.tv3o.com
Gladiator Picture will be a collection of pictures of the 2000 film, Gladiator. You have probably been searching high and low for pictures or clips related to the Gladiator but have yet to run across a site that has nothing but… well your search has ended.
This seems very cool!
Also check out a full listing of all On Demand Movies, sorted by rating to easier find movies to watch
http://ondemand.dothepapdance.com/