Comcast hits 1Bil VOD downloads, Mercury News not interested
VOD is a strange bag. On the one hand, it seems like everything we’ve ever wanted: watch anything at any time with the push of a button. On the other hand, things haven’t quite worked out that way. Studio restrictions have severely limited the content on VOD, making it a poor man’s DVR for many.
Still, Comcast has delivered a strong showing. They reported their one billionth VOD download this month. Reuters:
Cable giant Comcast Corp. said its On Demand service has logged more than 1 billion views of its programs so far this year, well ahead of schedule.
The Philadelphia-based company, which has made a heavy investment in VOD, had said that it would record 1 billion VOD views in 2005. On Demand logged 567 million VOD views last year. The service was launched in late 2002 in Philadelphia and has been rolled out to about 93% of the company’s markets.
“The reason that we’ve done better is because of the programming we’ve added over the course of a year,” said Page Thompson, vp and general manager of On Demand.
However, like many, the Mercury News is not particularly interested.
To be sure, VOD has made a big splash. Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest provider of cable-TV service, announced Thursday that it had served up one billion VOD programs since the service debuted in 2002.
But VOD’s arrival has been rendered less grand by other technologies, including digital video recorders such as TiVo. The technology also faces growing competition from video on the Internet, which is one reason Comcast is considering joining with Google Inc. to buy AOL’s video-rich Internet Web site.
Video-on-demand and TiVo both let viewers watch the programs they want when they want to watch them. But TiVo and other DVRs can be easily programmed to record any program on television, allowing viewers to watch at their leisure.
VOD is by no means in the toilette; there have been over a billion downloads, after all. But Mercury News does make an interesting point: It’s not the great technology we hoped it would be. Essentially, it’s another example of the big studios shooting down a technology because it’s not as profitable as DVD sales. Another example of this would be the poor selection of programs on Akimbo. They’re improving, and so is Comcast On Demand, but it’s still not DVR watch everything on TV whenever you want it. It’s not something I really gave too much thought about before, but I think it’s true. So far, VOD is for Discovery Channel shows, DVR is for Desperate Housewives.