After taking some time in limited beta, Comcast has renamed
its TV Everywhere streaming venture Fancast Xfinity TV and made it available nationally to all customers with internet and cable TV subscriptions. A simple browser plugin authorizes up to 3 computers per account, but now that it's live we've found more has
changed than just its unfortunate new name. Users won't need to be at home to activate their computers for viewing; all that's needed is a login and with plenty of cross browser compatibility it should work easily no matter your setup anywhere within the U.S. For us, the Comcast Access installer worked flawlessly on one Windows 7 equipped netbook while failing with an error message tech support couldn't decipher on a similar desktop. Once up and running, there's even some high-definition streaming video available (
Juno,
Max Payne,
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary and others) with more on the way. All told there's about 2000 hours of content online including HBO and Starz restricted items, peep the full list on Fancast.com or check out the setup and viewing process in our gallery below. Technical glitches aside, for the price of absolutely nothing over our current cable and internet bill with HD streaming already active, we may have a new way to keep up with our stories while on the go.
posted December 15th 2009 3:28PM
I hate you comcast
@Bowsa
+1
I understood fancast but I don't get the meaning behind Xfinity. Extreme Infinity Television? It doesn't make sense and this is exactly why comcast sucks.
TV Everywhere was a great name and made perfect sense but ,just like the DirecTV commercials have portrayed, the Comcast bigwigs probably had a meeting and decided that TV Everywhere wasn't extreme enough.
I'm certain that one of them convinced the other's that TV Everywhere wasn't edgy enough and they needed something that could connect with today's generation. Then another person probably said they needed an "X" in the name because "X's" portray edginess. All agreed because the Chinese food arrived and Fancast Xfinity TV was born.
Please download Comcast crapware to enhance your viewing pleasure.
@One Love Adobe Air?
@l3admonky
Dunder Mifflin Xfinity Xmail.
this is how Pam takes over the company.
@Bowsa Amen!
@Bowsa
Why? My sister has comcast and now I have it for free on her account!
Just tried it out and it appears to work. I don't really see the point, though. Since I don't subscribe to HBO, it's pretty much just Hulu (in fact there is a Hulu logo above the damn player). I see no benefit to this site over visiting Hulu or the networks' websites (unless you subscribe to premium channels).
@Alex Except that there's video from many other cable networks that aren't on Hulu.
@Alex and this will continue to be free when hulu becomes a fee service.
@RichardLawler
Good point, although it appears to be pretty slim pickings. Probably a lot of the same free on-demand stuff you can get from comcast cable boxes.
@rcberg3
Aren't they just adding new fee programming, rather than migrating current programming to a fee-based model?
@Alex It has content from providers other than Hulu. CBS for example isn't on Hulu but is on here. Course for that you can just go to TV.com... But eventually the idea is that all the stuff that isn't streaming anywhere else, like Discovery Channel, Food Network, etc. All that Expanded Basic stuff, will be online as well. Right now they also have HBO shows for example, assuming you subscribe.
If I could get it to work, I would find this quite valuable and would perhaps continue paying more for my cable TV than I might otherwise.
It serves a couple of purposes for me. 1) I have Tivo's so I don't have access to their VOD offerings, and this would give me that when I miss a new show or whatever, and 2) When I'm traveling I can watch a show on my laptop.
Don't let all your judgement be based on the damn name. If its a useful service we should all be happy it exists. If it fails or has crappy quality, or whatever, then you can slag it all you want.
that is a stupid name.
Doesnt work if you have the newest version or the bet 10.1 version of flash. Morons.
@dds1043 beta*
Xfinity would make a terrific name for a Porn Website.
@(Unverified)
In fact, I will now domain squat XXXfinity.
Wow, this is seriously awesome. Anyone have a comcast subscription I can bum off of for a while? ;) jk
I also noticed Comcast is rolling out Remote DVR Scheduling in the Eastern US as part of the Interactive Guide (on the set top).
Activation link: www.comcast.net/mydvr
Usage URL: www.comcast.net/tv/rdvr-listings [bookmark this!]
"xfinity" really? couldn't they just left it Fancast TV?
Since their Tech team is done with THIS project, now they can focus on getting a DVR-controlling iPhone App. COME ON, COMCAST. Get with it....
Unfortunately for them they already lost me as a customer. I wonder if this counts toward peoples bandwidth cap? Also wonder what the speed is like compared to their competitors?
@Ryujin Net Neutrality means that is does. I might be wrong though, if Net Neutrality hasn't been put into effect yet.
@Ryujin
Yeah, having a 250 GB cap is tough. That's hardly enough... I stream video all the time, via Netflix, Fancast/Hulu, Network Sites, you name it, and I have never hit the cap. Fancast works great. I just wish more of the network tv content was in HD.
@Ryujin I'm going to say it does count toward your bandwidth cap. You're streaming video over the internet. That uses bandwidth. I sincerely doubt that they would make an exception just because you burn through your bandwidth on their site. If anything, they'll probably start charging per mb over your cap, and use this to make money hand over fist.
"Net Neutrality means that is does. I might be wrong though, if Net Neutrality hasn't been put into effect yet."
And another otherwise normal brain succumbs to the rigors of FNC.
@Ryujin
THanks for some others providing common sense for this guy Ryujin. Some people don't realize it would take about half a month of constantly streaming HD video to put a dent in that cap. The cap is in place for people who HOG bandwidth by constantly pirating content. There's a reason it's in place, and generally helps out others on your block, who are impacted by people who illegally pirate and nonstop download content. Wake up people.
Don't know where this "HD" option is, all the stuff I've tried out thus far has been pretty low quality.
There logo is nearly identical to this TurkeyHill Gas Station logo!
http://members.cox.net/jonan626/pa_day3a.JPG
@Kajax77 nice
@Kajax77
That's actually the logo of the parent company of Turkey Hill - Kroger.
All Kroger gas stations and convenience stores have the new logo. It has not rolled out as their main store logo.
What a classic example of why Comcast is doomed. Take a perfectly good product name like "TV Everywhere" and rename it to something long, unremarkable, and impossible to remember.
Fancast Xfinity? WTF?
Since when did the Street Fighter team consult on naming new products? Comcast Fancast Xfinity TV Ex Plus Alpha FTW!
I can understand fancast but I don't get the meaning behind Xfinity. Extreme Infinity Television? It doesn't make sense and this is exactly why comcast sucks.
TV Everywhere was a great name and made perfect sense but ,just like the DirecTV commercials have portrayed, the Comcast bigwigs probably had a meeting and decided that TV Everywhere wasn't extreme enough.
I'm certain that one of them convinced the other's that TV Everywhere wasn't edgy enough and they needed something that could connect with today's generation. Then another person probably said they needed an "X" in the name because "X's" portray edginess. All agreed because the Chinese food arrived and Fancast Xfinity TV was born.
Xfinity is at least 2 more than infinity.
So far this service is terrible. Doesn't support the latest Firefox builds at ALL. I can spoof the user agent, but their Comcast Crapware doesn't support Firefox 3.7.
This is kind of nice for me, cause my family lives in Coon Rapids, MN where we get Comcast ans subscribe to HBO. I like in Duluth, MN where i go to school and we only get basic Charter cable in the on-campus apartments. So now i can stream HBO shows whenever I want. I'm glad they took that location restriction off.
So far, the only thing that wasn't really bad quality was The Cleveland Show. The Sing-Off, which just aired, looks sub-sub-SD.
So far, I still prefer using Hulu through PlayOn or Hulu Desktop to this.
I dont have access to comcast internet services, but can i sign up for just xfinity tv, I'd be willing to pay for it if i could
@keithmancuso Seems unlikely they'll do this since the whole point was to make you want to keep paying your Comcast TV bill.
Any word on streaming live shows like sports events?
BTW I just tried "In the Valley of Ellah" and it looked like shit. Def not HD.
"XFinity"? 'Sounds like something a five-year-old would say.
you would need not just one, but a TEAM of crummy writers and ad men to come up with a name that terrible... might as well call it the intertube-tv-box-3000
Windows Media Center or go home.
have it. tried it. unimpressed
Was Comcast.tv taken? That'd be a lot easier to remember. Oh well, don't really care much. Cable will die out once Netflix.com and Hulu.com secure the appropriate rights to distribute episodes day after air for everything.
Well I tried it last night and wasn't too impressed, but I'll keep checking in.
I looked for shows that aren't available online already and didn't find many. No Big Bang Theory episodes for example. They do have a number of HBO shows, and even though I subscribe to HBO, I was unable to play them.
Contacted Comcast support via chat and spent like two hours on hold with no support at all. Suspect they were overwhelmed. Not the end of the world for now. I'll try again later. If they can't get it working though...
After some technical glitches, and one of those unfortunate chats online with customer support, where they were more concerned with resetting my password than fixing my problem, I have access on 2 computers. Saving 1, because I'm unsure whether or not I'll be able to deauthorize a computer later on. All the premium channels work well, even on the asus eee pc 1000H running xp. The problems I had were twofold. first of all, I had signed into comcast with my gmail, and it auto-signed me into fancast. So somehow that seemed to mess up my access a bit. Also, my premium channel lineup was blocking HBO, then that was fixed and it is now blocking cinemax. Starz was fine and Showtime doesn't seem to be offered. I don't get TMC. This solves the problem of slingbox taking over the family room tv when someone is away, especially since we have iphones, and the slingbox is basically useless since ATT fraudulently limits our "unlimited" data plan so we can't utilize it over 3g without jailbreaking.
After reading some of the other posts, I had to add that the chat support was an exercise in futility. Unfortunately, I was on the eeepc and had to restart before I remembered to paste the chat convo into a document, or I would have loved to paste it here for your amusement. Basically, the chat person/bot kept insisting that if she reset my password that would somehow help me in spite of the fact that I had already logged in successfully. After that, she argued that I didn't subscribe to the services to which I do subscribe, and eventually I conceded that eventually the software would get better and it would work itself out, after realizing that despite "jan's" claims that I would have my problem fixed within 72 hours, I saw no evidence that she even understood the issue.