time warner

Cable television provider Time Warner Cable and content company Viacom swapped lawsuits today about whether Time Warner has the right to make Viacom's programming available to subscribers on Apple's iPad.

The tussle reflects the growing importance of the Internet as a distribution channel for movies and TV, as streaming companies like Netflix rake in subscribers and subscription fees--and hand out sizable licensing payments to content providers. (It also reflects the iPad's runaway success.)

Complexities aside, Time Warner and its ilk are looking to prevent services such as Netflix (not to mention iTunes and other outlets) from making … Read more

Time Warner Cable's new iPad app (originally detailed here) requires users to jump through several hoops of varying difficulty just to log in for the first time. In this case, at least, that persistence can pay off, as the end result is a streaming-video product that may be a new killer app for the iPad and eventually other tablets.

The difficult setup process stems from this: We're entering an era of stratification, or even fragmentation, of multimedia IPTV services and apps. It may have started with Web sites (such as BBC.co.uk) restricting what online video streams viewers could see depending on what country their IP addresses came from; now it's moved on to a series of tablet apps that play high-end content, but only if you're connecting through the right ISP.

Like ESPN on the Xbox 360 or the brand-new WatchESPN app for iOS, or the similar Optimum cable TV app, the TWCable TV app lets you tune in to a premium selection of cable TV content, as long as you're connecting through an approved ISP and, in the case of Time Warner, through an approved cable modem (the one connected with your user account).

As a Time Warner customer for at least a decade (although I was unsuccessfully hoping for some new options, such as Fios, when I moved recently), I didn't expect to have too much trouble getting the app to work. Unfortunately, signing in requires more than connecting through the Internet access point of an eligible subscriber (although, if you think about it, that hardware lockout is really all that's needed). I was asked to log in to the app with my Time Warner Cable username and password.

If you're a TWCNYC (as my local Time Warner Cable subsidiary is called) customer and you pay your bill online, you might think you already have a username and password. You would, in the Kafkaesque world of cable companies, be incorrect. You actually have a separate username and password for a payment system called PayXpress that stands apart from any other user account.

And, as a TWCNYC Internet access subscriber, you also have (but have probably never used) your included e-mail account, which is usually something@rr.com (for back when the service was called Road Runner). It's not a big deal that you've never heard of, or used, that account, because that's not the one you need, either. … Read more

Amazon scored tops in customer service out of 143 different companies, according to the Temkin Group.

Based on a survey of 6,000 different consumers in January, the 2011 Temkin Experience Ratings rated companies across a variety of industries based on recent dealings with customers. The survey looked at interactions online, in person, and over the phone, and asked consumers how their needs were met, how easy it was to do what they needed to do, and how they felt about the overall experience.

Retail chains did well in the survey, with Amazon followed by Costco, Lowe's, and Sam'… Read more

Cablevision Systems released an iPad app today that lets subscribers use the tablet at home--instead of just using their television--to view programs carried by the cable-TV distributor.

The news comes as fellow cable TV, Internet, and phone-service purveyor Time Warner Cable wrestles with programmers such as Discovery and Viacom over whether it can legally distribute their content on Apple's tablet via the Internet without paying to do so.

Unlike the Time Warner app, though, Cablevision says its offering sidesteps the Net and instead uses the company's proprietary Advanced Digital Cable network.

In a press release today, Cablevision said … Read more

Making good on its promise to fill the void left by yesterday's removal of nearly a dozen channels from its iPad app, Time Warner Cable has added 24 new ones.

Sixteen of the new channels are immediately available to all customers; three local channels are only available to users in the Austin and New York markets, according to the company. Included in the main list are news stations like CNN, C-SPAN, and MSNBC, along with entertainment diversions like the Food Network and Travel Channel.

Joining that list by tomorrow morning are five more including Bloomberg, Sprout, Hallmark Movie, Current, … Read more

Google's face recognition scares us with its privacy implications, Hollywood gives us $30 dollar movies, and its not an April Fool's Day joke. Honeycomb needs to bring more native apps to the platform, ASAP, and a SmartFart App already exists!

Just two weeks on the App Store and Time Warner Cable is once again scaling back the number of channels available on its live TV application for the iPad. But unlike the last time this happened, this crop could be gone for good.

Bowing to legal pressure from News Corp, Viacom, and Discovery, Time Warner Cable has removed 11 channels from the application, cutting away at the 32 it had offered before. Though a scant number when compared with home cable packages, which can number in the hundreds, the app represented the step toward taking that same lineup on the … Read more

Television networks are sending cease-and-desist letters to Time Warner Cable over the company's new iPad app, a report claims.

Citing an anonymous industry source, BusinessInsider reported yesterday that networks are taking issue with Time Warner Cable's TWCable TV iPad app's ability to let users stream programming to the Apple tablet, and they're requesting their content be removed from the program. The source told Business Insider that the networks believe content streaming to an iPad app is entirely separate from offering programming through Time Warner Cable's set-top boxes.

Time Warner Cable declined to comment to CNET. … Read more

On today's show, Time Warner's new live TV iPad app is too cool to last very long, iOS is slower than Android (but Apple's nit-picking the results, predictably), and Sony is continuing to try to turn George Hotz into a smoking crater for daring to jailbreak the PS3. --Molly