Comcast customers don’t have to worry about finding a new place to watch their favorite Disney-owned content for the next 10 years. Today, Comcast and The Walt Disney Company announced the signing of a new distribution agreement between the two companies. In addition to being able to watch a slew of ESPN, Disney and ABC more »

At the end of November, an analyst claimed that either Time Warner, Cox Communications or Charter Communications will start charging its broadband internet customers based on the amount of bandwidth they use. This is a method that would certainly get under the skin of customers that are used to paying a fixed rate for internet based on download and upload speeds. On the other hand, the extra funds acquired from the heaviest internet users could in theory help make up for the number of customers that are ditching cable service in favor of constant video content through the web. Now Comcast, the largest internet service provider in the United States, has come out and announced it will not switch to tiered broadband plans.

Last week, Universal announced plans to offer the upcoming film Tower Heist as a $60 rental for Comcast customers in Portland and Atlanta. The rental fee would have covered unlimited viewings for 48 hours. It turns out theater companies such as Cinemark and National Amusements didn’t like that idea and threatened to not show Tower Heist if Universal went along with its plan. Universal has since decided to not offer Tower Heist as a home rental.

Movie studios are looking into new business models just as book publishers and music labels have done. One new method will be tested by Universal Pictures and Comcast in November. Comcast customers in Portland and Atlanta will be able to rent the upcoming film Tower Heist for $60 while it’s still in theaters.

Hurricane Irene was thankfully not as devastating as it could have been. However, there were still some services outages that resulted from the pouring rain. Some Comcast customers for example experienced a loss of cable, internet and phone service for days. After some confusion, it seems that Comcast will credit at least some accounts affected by Irene.

Comcast is rolling out a new monthly plan called Internet Essentials. Internet Essentials is a $10 a month internet service that is aimed to benefit families with children that are a part of the National School Lunch Program. Comcast was required to offer a service such as this as part of its merger agreement with NBC Universal.

Just when you thought it was safe to abandon cable in favor of an internet-dominated existence, Comcast comes along with an offer that’s tempting. Comcast is testing to see if offering a Motorola Xoom will get more customers to sign up.

If Comcast’s announcement about bringing Skype to its customer’s televisions wasn’t enough of a curveball, the cable giant has one more to throw at us. Comcast has joined forces with Facebook, Intel and Pace to bring forth a set of features for its Xfinity TV customers.

Straight out of the 2011 Cable Show, Comcast and Skype will work together to provide internet calling through Comcast cable boxes. The move echos many TV manufacturers efforts to put Skype on their TVs. Trials will begin in the coming months. The service will start off at 720 resolution but will move to 1080 eventually, more »

As internet connection speeds increase and technology gets more sophisticated, the public is discovering new ways to consume media. For a good example of this, look at Netflix. Netflix currently accounts for almost 30 percent of downstream internet traffic in the United States. Netflix can be viewed on a computer, phone, tablet, game console, Blu-ray player, Roku and it’s even built into some televisions. Services such as Netflix helped create the idea of cable cord-cutting. That means that more people are cancelling their cable television service in favor of video services the internet has to offer.