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  • Comcast's Xfinity TV Store brings movies, TV shows you can keep to its cable boxes and apps

    by 
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    11.19.2013

    First revealed in rumors last week, the Comcast Xfinity TV Store is now available, selling movies and TV shows. Until now the cable company has offered its traditional video subscriptions, PPV and video on-demand rentals, but now it's offering more transactions of a more permanent nature. Pricing and content is similar to that of other digital sores like Amazon VOD, iTunes and Vudu, but it has the extra edge of working with user's existing cable TV set-top boxes for viewing on TV, just like Verizon's Flex View. Of course, most of us have one (or three, or five) boxes ready to access digital content but that may not be true for everyone, and any of the millions of customers with access to Comcast VOD should be able to use this. On other platforms, the videos also stream to PCs via the Xfinity Purchases website, and the apps for iOS and Android have already landed. One of our main questions concerned what would happen if a customer leaves Comcast, and while the content will still work, they'll need to complete an account transfer within 60 days to keep access. There's a demo video showing how this all works (embedded after the break) and all the online moving parts appear to be live, for those interested. In the end however, its very typical pricing, DRM and content means that while the studios will be happy with another storefront, we're not expecting it to shake things up anytime soon.