Comcast, AT&T, beef up personalized TV service offerings

Once-and-future TV service competitors Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA)--especially if it acquires Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and swaps customers with Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR)--and AT&T (NYSE: T) have beefed up their TV offerings with new features aimed at further personalizing the interactive viewing experience.

Comcast, in a press release issued from The Cable Show in Los Angeles, said that triple play subscribers using its advanced X1 platform will be able to stream personal video from their mobile devices to their televisions via the Internet by early 2015.

"Imagine you're in Philadelphia and can live stream your son's tee-ball game to his grandparents' TV in San Francisco," Marcien Jenckes, executive vice president of consumer services for Comcast Cable said in the release. "X1 has set an industry standard for home entertainment (that) transcends traditional TV to deliver an immersive and personalized entertainment experience across all devices."

The latest feature, he added, is "just another example of how we're making X1 the center of the customer's home."

AT&T, on the other hand, is trying to do the same by further personalizing its U-verse service with features on trending and recommendations on what programming to watch on demand, the carrier said in a press release.

The trending feature offers up a dynamic list of the most popular shows being watched in the viewer's area. On-demand recommendations provide personal suggestions for TV shows and movies based on criteria ranging from the subscriber's known interests to plot lines.

"With such extensive live and on-demand offerings on U-verse TV, we wanted to give customers an easy way to discover and watch the content they want," Mel Coker, AT&T's chief marketing officer for Home Solutions said in a press release.

Neither service provider went as far as RCN, Grande Communications and Atlantic Broadband, which have added a Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) application to their set-top boxes. Both AT&T and Comcast have been embroiled in disputes with Netflix about broadband data transport.

For more:
- Comcast has this press release
- and AT&T has this press release

Related articles:
Basic cable subs show hankering for movie fare
Despite multiple screen options, TV remains preferred streaming device
Netflix added to TiVo set-tops at Atlantic Broadband, Grande, RCN
Netflix cuts deal to pay Verizon for direct access