Cable Operators See IP Video Services Coming to Other Home Devices

Cable operators are working on plans to provide more IPTV services to new devices such as laptops and iPads when they're used in a subscriber’s home, executives told investors Thursday during earnings calls. Time Warner Cable and Cablevision are both at work on new products along those lines. Eventually, that could drive down the need for traditional set-top boxes in the home, TWC CEO Glenn Britt said. “Over the next few years we will gradually have fewer set tops,” as new devices with Wi-Fi and home networking standards such as Multimedia over Coax are introduced, he said.

Cablevision is working to provide its full cable service to similar new devices via IPTV, COO Tom Rutledge said. “When you look at an iPad in a Cablevision home, you'll be able to get every service we provide,” he said. “Everything that’s part of our cable service will be displayed on an IPTV device.” Keeping IPTV services in the home simplifies the rights issues, he said. Web portals for IPTV and place shifting devices require different rights structures, he said.

TWC and Cablevision are working on applications similar to the one Comcast CEO Brian Roberts demonstrated at the Cable Show this year that will allow subscribers to browse their cable and VoD lineup on an iPad. “I think we do need a better interface and some of these devices that have more intelligence … will allow that,” Britt said. Cablevision said it will have a similar product available soon. “We're experimenting with our guide being on devices like the iPad, or iPhone or Android phone or PC, where you can go through the guide and pick the movie and have it play on the TV,” he said. “Those kinds of products are coming to market in the very near future."

Cablevision and TWC found little evidence of the DTV transition affecting subscriber results for Q2, executives said. Earlier, Comcast has attributed some of its subscriber losses to customers who bought 12-month promotional offers ahead of the switchover and left when the price increased. “I don’t think it was a significant factor in our business,” Cablevision’s Rutledge said “I can’t say it was significant enough that I paid attention to it.” Likewise, TWC’s subscriber results were low not because of customers leaving, but because it signed up so few new customers, TWC CFO John Martin said. That can be attributed to weak economic metrics such as high unemployment and vacancy rates among homes, he said.

At Insight, which held a teleconference with new bondholders for the first time in years, the DTV transition may have played a role in Q2 subscriber results, CFO John Abbott said. Last year the transition “certainly benefited basic video and there was a flow-through effect to the other products to some degree,” he said. But he couldn’t say how those subscribers affected Q2 2010 results. Insight lost 12,000 basic customers during the quarter. TWC lost 111,000 and Cablevision added 2,900.