RSSComcast: 42% of digital subscribers use high-def, DV-R
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published February 14, 2008, 5:53 PM
At CES 2008 last month, it was surprising to see Comcast as a brand being tossed around with the likes of Matsushita, Motorola, and Sony. Now it's time to see if its video-on-demand strategy is starting to pay off.
Comcast today reported substantial increases in revenue and income in 2007, crediting this growth to a combination of acquisitions and operating results. Although the cable provider's growth in broadband and digital voice subscriberships slowed at the end of the year, Comcast also saw progress in areas such as high-definition (HD) TV and video on demand (VoD), where it is making new investments, including with respect to a project dubbed Infinity.
Like other cable providers, Comcast is moving into voice -- the traditional province of telecom providers -- while at the same time fending off mounting competition from phone service providers such as AT&T and Verizon in the data and video sectors.
All told, Comcast's revenues rose 24% to $30.9 billion in 2007, and operating income stepped up 21% to $5.6 billion, according to officials.
In a financial conference call today, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts did not rule out the possibility of further acquisitions.
"I want to address our acqusition strategy head-on. We are committed to remain discliplied in our approach to acqusitions, and we'll place every opportunity through rigorous financial and strategic filters," Roberts said. "To be clear, we are not spending any time on any of the large transformative acquisitions that [others] have been speculating about, such as Yahoo or Sprint."
On a year-over-year basis, Comcast's digital cable subscribership stepped up 33% in 2007, with the addition of 2.5 million new customers.
But Comcast added merely 331,000 broadband subscribers during the fourth quarter of 2007, in comparison to 450,000 broadband subscribers in the third quarter. Similarly, Comcast's numbers of new digital voice subscribers dropped from 662,000 in the third quarter to 604,000 in the fourth quarter.
On the other hand, Comcast's recent emphasis on high-end video services appears to be paying off.
In 2007, 6.3 million -- or 42 percent -- of Comcast's digital cable subscribers used "advanced services" such as HDTV (high definition TV) and DVR (digital video recorders), in comparison to 3.6 million -- or 36 percent -- in 2006.
Revenues from Comcast's On Demand pay-per-view VOD service jumped 22% in 2007 to $774 million.
"We continue to roll out advanced digital video services like HD and DVRs, and we are committed to delivering truly superior high-definition television and unmatched interactive TV. For high-def that means nearly 300 choices today, growing to over 1000 HD choices for virtually every Comcast High-Def customer by the end of this year," Roberts said today.
"Next, we are working on a new architecture that will let us offer every month over 6,000 movies on-demand to our customers, more than 3,000 of them in high-definition. In fact, this new architecture paced away for our ultimate vision of what On Demand can be. We call it Project Infinity."
I've been a comcast customer in Colorado for years, but recently switched to DirecTV for everything but internet (they'll pry my cable modem from my cold, dead hands). I was ok with the Comcast service, but the DVR boxes in Colorado were all junk refurbs. They lasted us on average about 4-6 months. Then it would start to forget taping shows, pixellate the heck out of them, and drop the sound. After 5 boxes, I gave up. When they get some more robust hardware (or I get the cash for my HTPC and find a Cable-card tuner), I'll look into them again.
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|> Revenues from Comcast's On Demand pay-per-view VOD service jumped 22% in 2007 to $774 million.
This is the real reason why Comcast is trying to stop P2P on its networks, P2P is nothing more than competition to its video on demand products.
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|I'm not a Comcast hater (they can get high speed Internet to my house, where Verizon can't seem to figure out how to do it).
One thing these stats do not show - at least in this area, the only way I could get a cable box with HDMI was to switch to their DVR box ($10/month more). I do like the DVR, but I would have been OK with a non-DVR box if it had HDMI.
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|I am also a Comcast customer, and I am living in Southwest Michigan. I got the DVR box with the HDMI outputs for my HDTV, but I do not pay the extra $10 per month for the DVR service. They simply gave me the box when I asked. My box has DVR capability, it simply doesn't function, I think they enable/disable that feature via smartcard on the right-front of the unit.
In your case I would probably push to get the box without the DVR enabled if I didn't want the feature.
My only complaint so far with the HDTV offered by my local Comcast service is that they seem to compress the signal to the point that the image pixelates during content with lots of separate moving images and flashing lights.
On a side-note, I also was able to get Comcast to provide me with broadband when nobody else seemed to be able to figure it out, even though I live merely 1 mile from a major urban center.
The price is fair, and after a rocky start, the service has been adequate.
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|If HDMI is what your looking for, take a look at this...
http://www.scientificatl.../new_explorer4250HD.htm
You can also use:
http://www.scientificatl...rs/new_explorer2200.htm
and
http://broadband.motorol...sumers/products/dct6200/
The second two boxes require the use of a DVI to HDMI adapter but that can be had for cheap. Quality is another question but there are non-dvr options.
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