James Delahunty
24 Feb 2010 4:58
Cablevision is set to trial a new concept service in New York, where it serves 3 million homes. A household with both Cablevision Internet access and cable television services will be able to take part. Basically, the service will use your Internet connection to stream pretty much anything from your computer screen to your television, delivered as your own personal TV channel through your cable.
Titled PC to TV Media Relay, Cablevision is offering the service to customers in an attempt to provide innovative and useful solutions for home media consumption as sites like Hulu become more popular. In order to use the service, a user only needs to install software on a Windows-based machines. Cablevision will market it as enabling online viewing on a television with the push of a button.
Pricing for the service has yet to be decided, and users of Macs will be included as soon as software for the platform is developed. The move follows a service from Comcast called On Demand Online, launched last year to offer cable programming to subscribers of both Comcast Internet and cable TV services.
"Linear video will, no doubt, continue to exist, and even to thrive, but broadband will by then almost inarguably be the core business for the cable companies," Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett said, referring to how the cable sector will change over the next 10 years.