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
Just spent 90 minutes trying to get it set up. Trying to play video just results in a message telling me to launch "Comcast Access" ... which is running and says I'm "authorized". After logging off and on randomly at the direction of the chat lady for a while she filed a ticket, then congratulated herself for resolving my problem.
She pointed out that the service is still "Beta", which you wouldn't know from all the press coverage of the last few days.
I'm not happy about having to install Adobe Air ... which is what Comcast Access is written on. Every Air app I've used (TweetDeck, I mean you) has been a bloated memory hog.
I checked it out last night. There is hardly any content on there that I could find. For HBO (yes, I subscribe to HBO) there were no full episodes of anything, only clips. Same for most everything else I looked at. Looks very lame to me.
@gallery69
You're doing something schway wrong. TONS of HBO, Cinemax, etc. - premium content available. Full ep's. Hardly any trailers. Figure yourself out.