Channel Guide Goes Away in TWC App for New Roku Box

The joint app announced at CES by Time Warner Cable and Roku, which launched last week with the debut of the Roku 3 streaming player and software upgrade, is a “glimpse into the future” of cable TV, BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield wrote in a blog post Friday. The pact between Time Warner and Roku marks the first time TWC TV is available for streaming on a consumer device connected to a TV (CED Jan 17 p4). The authenticated app replicates Time Warner’s existing app -- available on iOS devices and TWCTV.com services via PC -- which streams live linear TV channels and soon, VOD programming.

Using the app, Time Warner subscribers can stream up to 300 live TV channels via Roku, “effectively replacing the cable set-top on some TVs,” Greenfield said. Time Warner subscribers who own Roku boxes don’t pay extra fees for the service, he noted.

Greenfield demoed the app on his blog, praising the quality of the HD feed, which is delivered over IP through the cable wire delivered to the home via dedicated cable bandwidth and not splintered from the Wi-Fi network. The service is “is not fighting for bandwidth over the open Internet, resulting in a high-quality picture and a ‘zippy’ user experience,” Greenfield said. The only sharing of bandwidth occurs with devices such as the Roku box that share the cable modem inside your home -- in wired or wireless fashion, he said. Greenfield used the wired Ethernet connection for his demo. The speedy user experience was evident from the video post, although the quality of the video didn’t translate via the compressed video feed on the blog, we found.

According to the Roku website, Roku 3 requires a broadband connection with a speed of at least 1.5 Mbps. The Time Warner authenticated service is available on Roku 2, Roku HD (model 2500), Roku LT or the Roku Streaming Stick, it said. Roku positions the box for “places where you may not have a cable box, like in the bedroom or the den” where the box enables users to stream TWC TV. Roku 3 works only with HDTVs and requires an HDMI connection, Roku said.

The most noticeable change we noticed using the Time Warner/Roku app, compared with traditional TV program searching, is the lack of a channel guide. Programs are laid out alphabetically in an All Channels section, making it easy to find Modern Family under M rather than having to remember which channel it’s on, “a novel idea,” Greenfield said. Beyond All Channels, the guide filters content currently being broadcast into genres: broadcast TV, movies, premium channels, sports, news, kids and others. Programs are listed by cover art rather than text, and channel numbers disappear altogether in the new UI. That’s a positive for lower visibility cable channels with limited marketing dollars but not necessarily a plus for major networks. “As channel numbers disappear, one of the biggest advantages of broadcast TV disappear,” Greenfield said, which “could add even greater pressure to already falling broadcast ratings."

Genre sorting via the TWC/Roku app “still needs work” and it would be useful to be able to scan by hours and days ahead for upcoming programming, Greenfield said, but he found the user interface to be “a far easier way to discover content to watch right now than the typical grid, text-based guide we are all accustomed to."

Other service providers have offered authenticated VOD, Greenfield noted -- Comcast has offered authenticated VOD via Xbox and Verizon FiOS offers a limited selection of live channels via the Xbox, but TWC and Roku have gone “all the way” with as many as 300 live linear channels and VOD on the way in the next few months. “Now any room in your house with a TV can offer TWC programming with the addition of a $99 Roku box, wired or wireless broadband (from TWC) and an HDMI cable,” he said.

The TWC app does not offer the ability to record to a DVR, a feature Greenfield advocated on his blog. There’s no technological reason “a cloud-based, network DVR isn’t possible” given the IP-based nature of the app, he said, saying Cablevision offers DVR capability on its mobile app. But DVR capability doesn’t appear to be in the works at TWC, despite subscriber support for it. Jeff Simmermon, Time Warner Cable director-digital communications and host of a TWC blog called “Untangled,” said in January that “while … DVR playback via app would be awesome, I don’t know what it means for us to do that from a business or technology perspective."

On the Roku UI, TWC TV is positioned alongside apps from Netflix, Amazon, Aereo, HBO Go, Crackle, and more. As TV “becomes an app,” and users seamlessly move between apps as they do on tablets, “the walled-garden of television starts to erode,” Greenfield said. “The key implication is that time spent watching linear TV will decline and advertising will come under attack” as more video apps offer programming without ads, he said.

Greenfield called the TWC app “just the beginning” of the new world of cable-based video, where technology companies “innovate on the front of cable’s video pipe -- essentially leveraging a video API of multi-channel television data.” Calling cable companies “not the most creative companies,” Greenfield said their ability to “build interfaces for discovering/navigating video will pale in comparison to what others can create.” Apps like the TWC/Roku one will be one way for cable companies to differentiate from satellite competitors that can’t deliver a managed service over IP without a broadband pipeline, he said. “This should enable cable companies like TWC to gain market share and potentially even charge premium prices for their service offerings,” he said.