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In (Reluctant) Defense of Cable TV
The New York Times’ Matt Richtel and Brian Stelter have a nice story today on the threat posed to traditional cable TV by free and low-cost Internet TV. Despite the growing sophistication of Web...
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Comcast’s Xfinity TV Gets Better
Comcast has a Web-based TV service (using its superfluous Xfinity brand) that’s not all that fantastic–but it is the start of an intriguing idea, and it does have some exclusive content for cable...
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Hands On: The Xfinity iPad App
Comcast launched the Xfinity TV app to much fanfare this week, and though we knew it was coming, we didn’t know all the nitty gritty details until we got our own hands on. After a test run on the...
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Comcast Ultra-High Speed Internet Expands
Need really, really fast Internet? Comcast on Thursday bragged that its ‘Extreme 105′ ultra-high speed internet is now available in about 40 million homes across many major markets, or about 85 percent...
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TiVo-Comcast Deal Puts On Demand on TiVo
I own a TiVo HD DVR and have Comcast cable. I’m mostly happy with the combination, except for one major gotcha: getting TiVo means giving up Comcast’s Xfinity On Demand service. But the two companies...
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No, Comcast Wasn’t Blocking Pirate Bay
The blogosphere was aflutter early this morning as a multitude of reports began to appear on Comcast subscribers’ troubles in accessing popular torrent site The Pirate Bay. Was this throttling redux?...
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Comcast Plans to Offer Skype on TVs
I don’t know whether Comcast is afraid of Internet-connected TVs and set-top boxes, but that’s the way the cable company’s plans for Skype support look from here. Comcast will bring Skype to customers...
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AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon May Start Punishing File Sharers
People who illegally download movies and music may soon face more than just empty threats from their Internet service providers. Some of the largest ISPs in the United States are close to agreements...
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Comcast Chat Transcription
I don’t doubt that there’s a human being providing customer support in this Comcast chat transcript–but that doesn’t make it any less weird and robotic-sounding. It’s also eerily similar to the tone of...
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Comcast Puts Live TV on Tablets
From CES, a reason not to ditch Comcast: It’s bringing live TV channels to the iPad and other tablets. (The service only works when you’re in range of the Wi-Fi router connected to your Comcast cable...
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TechReads for July 14, 2014
The password is dying. (Christopher Mims/WSJ) And to prove it, Mims shares his own Twitter password (which is christophermims). Bringing back Prodigy. (Benj Edwards/The Atlantic) One man wants to...
View ArticleAt Comcast, You’re Not Just a Valued Customer–You’re Also an Indentured Servant
My friends Ryan Block and Veronica Belmont decided to cancel their Comcast service and switch to Astound, a smaller cable company available here in the Bay Area. So they called Comcast–and talked to a...
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One New Slingbox Caters to the Masses, the Other to High-End Users
Slingbox M1 When it debuted back in 2005, the original Slingbox–which let you pipe your TV signal at home over the Internet to a distant computer or smartphone–helped invent the whole idea that you...
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TechReads for July 16, 2014
Why that Comcast rep wouldn’t let Ryan and Veronica just cancel. (Adrianne Jeffries/The Verge) Because doing so would cost him money. Fox tried to buy Time Warner. (Andrew Ross Sorkin/Michael De La...
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The New Features in Jawbone’s Up App Are All About Eating
Thanks to wearable fitness gadgets such as Jawbone’s Up and Up24 wristbands, it’s now very easy to get some sense of how many calories you’re burning as you go about your everyday activities. But...
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Microsoft to reorg, cut up to 18,000 jobs. (Satya Nadella/Microsoft)
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How to Animate Your Dragon
A DreamWorks Animation artist works on How to Train Your Dragon 2 using Premo Mr. Peabody and Sherman, the computer-animated movie which DreamWorks Animation released in March is–of course–the tale of...
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A Celebration of James Garner’s Polaroid Commercials
They weren’t the best thing he ever did, or the one which we’ll cherish the most. But with the sad news of the passing of James Garner, it’s worth pausing to remember the commercials he did in the late...
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I’m Going to Want a Car With Built-In LTE…Eventually
Buick owners enjoying their car’s built-in LTE in a photo provided by GM Last week, General Motors invited me to a press event at which it showed off some new Buicks. Normally, such events involve...
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RIP, Jim Frederick
Jim Frederick, the first editor I had during my time as a tech writer for TIME, died unexpectedly on Thursday night. He was only 42, and I’m still in shock. The loss would be incalculable no matter...
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