Comcast courts cord-cutters with new streaming service
In August, Comcast’s new T.V. streaming service called Stream will launch in Boston. Marketplace Tech host, Ben Johnson, talks with Lindsey Turrentine, Editor-in-Chief at CNET.com, about the cable’s company entry into the streaming market.
Click the media player above to hear more.
Turrentine says the new service “is obviously aimed at cord cutters.” She maintains the cable giant’s move to debut Stream in Boston is just as strategic as it is transparent: “It seems pretty obvious that they’re trying to figure out what college students will do,” alluding to the number of colleges in the Boston area.
Comcast’s Stream will be available to Xfinity customers and will give them access to about a dozen T.V. channels on their tablets, phones, and laptops. Stream also provides a DVR option to record shows onto the cloud. Turrentine believes that it “feels more like television.” Apart from the fact that “it’s not available on your television.”
In a time of expansion in the streaming service industry with services from Dish, HBO, Showtime, CBS, and more, Turrentine says Comcast “has got to have an answer” because “customers who are never onboarding as cable television subscribers will be totally lost to these services if cable companies do not figure out how to keep them.”
The test for college-aged Bostonians is whether they would want to add an extra monthly fee for 12 stations and a DVR. This is sounding a lot more like bunny ears and a VCR than a multi-platform video streaming experience.
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