Yesterday (March 15 th), Time Warner Cable released their iPad media app on iTunes. In a move designed to defend themselves from cable subscribers switching to rivals Netflix and Hulu, the app will now allow streaming of live content to the TWCable app.
In the middle of last year Time Warner released a series of videos showing the thought process that went into designing the app. CEO Glenn Britt and CTO Mike LaJoie among others held a round table discussion where they demoed an early prototype of the app. At that point the app had several key functions in place, it served as a digital TV Guide, remote control and had a limited supply of videos from the Time Warner catalog.
Now that consumers have the finalized app in hand it seems that Time Warner has failed to secure the one thing needed for mass adoption of a new technology, they created a closed platform. The TWcable app can only be used by existing Time Warner customers, you have to be home while using the service, the app works over wifi only and worst yet TW has to be your internet service provider. Major fail.
I understand their desire to keep all customers and content under one roof (literally) but, this still places them at a disadvantage to NetFlix and Hulu. Consumers are already accustomed to streaming video from anywhere, over any internet connection. What’s the point of staying home to stream a video to your iPad when the television is only a few feet away?
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