Tuesday, May 22, 2012

XFINITY Streampix Free Preview

I got an email from Xfinity today that they are having a free preview of their Streampix service from May 22 through May 28th for Xfinity Customers.  You can watch the first season of 10 of the top TV shows including:  Lost, Desperate Housewives, Heroes and Rescue Me.  They are also offering 24 Movies including: Ocean's Eleven. Ghostbusters and The Big Lebowski.  Below link will bring you to the preview:

Streampix Free Preview

For those that are unfamiliar with Streampix it is Xfinty's Netflix killer.   If you subscribe to XfinityTV Phone and Internet you get Streampix for free.  Everyone else (like me) has to pay and additional $4.99 a month for the service.  I have to say I am a bit confused by the service as it seems to be a similar product as OnDemand.  Which I can watch on my TV, PC or mobile device but I don't have to pay extra.  But I guess content is key with Streampix.  They offer more popular movies and TV series with full seasons of some of them.  For me though definitely not worth the extra $5 a month to watch Ghostbusters and Superman.

Will be interesting to see where they go with it.  I think Xfinity can see that the cable industry will eventually go the way of the dinosaur with streaming becoming more popular.  This is Xfinity sticking their toe in the water early so they don't get left behind.

Xfinity TV for XBOX 360

Xfinity recently announced that they they are making their OnDemand content available on XBOX for existing Xfinity customers.  Looks like a cool little interface that allows you to stream their content to the gaming console.

Requirements for this new service are:

  1. XBox 360 Gaming Console
  2. Xbox Live Gold Subscription
  3. Xfinity Internet
  4. Xfinity Digital TV

Not sure what the advantage of this service is except you can watch OnDemand content without having to plug in an additional cable box.  Maybe good for the kids room.  My guess is this is the distant future of cable TV.  No more cable boxes, just apps that run on any device that will allow you to stream all content.  Looks like a direct shot at Netflix to me.

An interesting feature is that with Kinect  you can change channels, pause and rewind with hand or voice commands. 

No word on a similar app for other devices like the PS3 (which I have).  Wouldn't be very useful for me anyway as I already have a cable box.