Time Warner Cable (TWC) is closing in on piping Internet video onto subscribers’ TVs.
Bringing Internet content to televisions has long been a Holy Grail of sorts for both consumers and cable operators. According to Reuters, TWC CEO Glenn Britt said at a conference in New York on Friday that he expects his company will be able to offer such an application in one or two years.
From a technology standpoint, cable operators have some work to do in order to bridge the gap between TVs and the public Internet, and they also need to resolve content rights issues. Cable operators, content providers and broadcasters will also have to come to terms with how Internet video will be monetized by all of the parties involved in the food chain.
Britt said at the conference that brining Internet video to TV screens was part of TWC’s home networking strategy, which was also outlined at last months’ National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) show in New Orleans during a tru2way panel.
Britt said the Internet content would be distributed via a wireless cable modem in customers’ homes. At the NCTA conference, Bill Helms, TWC’s VP of subscriber equipment, said that the OpenCable group is working on OpenCable Home Networking, which is an extension to the OpenCable Platform.
He said tru2way adds in the ability to have a distribution technology in a hub device within the subscribers’ home networking system in order to provision applications such as multi-room DVR, as well as photo sharing and video sharing to and from PCs and TVs.
Helms cited Caller ID on TVs, which TWC launched several years ago, as one example of tying two bundled services together.
Sree Kotay, Comcast Cable’s SVP and chief software architect, said during the same panel with Helms that Comcast is also looking at tying in services such as Internet video to TV screens, but he said it wasn’t going to happen at Comcast for at least a year.
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