Windstream this week introduced its fiber to the neighborhood service Kinetic – its attempt to bring a competitive triple-play package of broadband, home phone, and television service to about 50,000 homes initially in Lincoln, Neb.

“We’re extremely excited to launch Kinetic in Lincoln,” said David Redmond, president of small business and consumer at Windstream. “Over the last year, we have heard loudly and clearly that this community is excited and eager for an alternative TV service. Windstream is confident that residents that sign up for Kinetic will find a highly interactive experience and a smarter way to watch TV than cable or satellite.”

The project in Lincoln will test consumer reaction and help the company plan if or how it plans to expand the service across many of its other service areas across the country.

Powered by the Ericsson Mediaroom platform, Kinetic is Windstream’s effort to squeeze about as much use of its existing copper wire infrastructure as possible. Like AT&T U-verse, Kinetic requires a fiber connection part of the way to customers, but continues to rely on existing copper telephone wiring already in the subscriber’s neighborhood. In effect, it’s an enhanced DSL platform that will split available bandwidth between television, Internet access and home phone service.

One unique aspect of Kinetic is its use of a next generation, compact whole home DVR that can record four shows at the same time, supplemented with wireless set-top boxes ($7/mo each), that allow subscribers to take the service to any television in the home without wiring. A subscriber can even move a television out into the yard and not lose service.

Remarkably, Windstream — an independent telephone company — completely de-emphasizes its own phone service in its up front promotions. Unless customers dig deeper into the Kinetic website, they will find prominently featured double play packages of television and Internet service starting at $59.98 a month. Telephone service is offered (and priced) almost as an afterthought, bundled into various packages for $5 extra a month. Phone customers get unlimited nationwide local and long distance calling.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Windstream Kinetic TV 4-2015.flv[/flv]

Windstream produced this introductory video to its new Kinetic TV service, offered initially to 50,000 homes in Lincoln, Neb. (1:20)

We added the pricing details for Home Phone service.

The biggest limitation Windstream faces marketing the service is its legacy network of copper wires. Customers can only qualify for the service if the connection between their home and Windstream’s central office is good enough to sustain the speeds required to handle all three services at the same time. The company is focusing Kinetic squarely on customers looking for a cable television alternative to Lincoln’s only other provider — Time Warner Cable. That may be because Kinetic remains disadvantaged in the broadband department.

The highest Internet speed a Kinetic customer can buy is 15Mbps, which is the speed Time Warner Cable offers in its “Standard” package. Time Warner currently sells up to 50/5Mbps in Lincoln — more than three times faster than Windstream’s Kinetic. Many Windstream DSL customers have complained they don’t come close to the speeds they are paying for, particularly during peak usage periods. A Facebook group with over 500 customers exists to discuss exactly that issue. Whether it will be different for Kinetic customers is not yet known, but the company’s lawyers are prepared for that possibility.

Windstream’s Whole House DVR is only about the length of its remote control.

“Windstream cannot guarantee speeds or uninterrupted, error-free service,” the company says in its terms and conditions. “Internet speed claims represent maximum network service capability speeds.  Actual customer speeds may vary based on factors including simultaneous use of multiple devices, use of other Windstream services, customer device capabilities, Internet and Network congestion, website traffic, content provider service capacity, customer location, network conditions, and bandwidth devoted to carriage or protocol and network information.”

At least there are no usage caps.

Kinetic subscribers are also warned that just like DSL broadband, line quality will impact the kind of television service received.

“Kinetic TV includes digital channels (including local channels), one receiver and up to four standard direct video streams to the customer residence,” Windstream notes. “Of the four standard direct video streams per residence, customer’s location will determine both high definition (“HD”) availability and the maximum number of HD video streams (between one and four) a customer can view and record in HD at any one time, regardless of the number of receivers in the residence.  The remaining streams will be standard definition.”

Kinetic’s channel lineup is comparable to that of Time Warner Cable, with some minor exceptions. Time Warner imports some regional over the air channels from adjacent cities, Windstream does not. Certain channels like Turner Classic Movies are available on Kinetic, but only for customers subscribing to the most expensive tier. Time Warner offers that channel on its less expensive Standard tier.

Limited bandwidth may limit your broadband speeds and the number of HD channels you can watch at any one time.

Time Warner Cable spokesman Mike Hogan took indirect shots at both the City of Lincoln and Windstream in response to the introduction of Kinetic.

“Lincoln residents can count on the fact that Time Warner Cable will offer the best choices for TV, Internet, home phone and home security to the entire city — in sharp contrast to competitors who only serve select areas, or won’t even say where they will or won’t serve,” Hogan said in an email to the Journal-Star.

That’s a reference to Windstream’s refusal to specify exactly where in Lincoln Kinetic is available.

Stop the Cap! surveyed more than 100 Lincoln-area addresses this morning and found Kinetic available primarily in wealthy and newer neighborhoods south and southeast of the city center, including zip codes such as 68516. A review of real estate transactions across the city of Lincoln showed home prices in this area are well above other parts of the city. That suggests Windstream is targeting the service to higher-income neighborhoods during its initial rollout, which plans to reach up to 45 percent of city households.

Although Windstream officials expect to bring Kinetic to about 80% of Lincoln, the city has given the company 15 years to complete the project. Further expansion may also depend on how customers respond to Kinetic.

With plenty of time, Windstream may choose to turn its attention elsewhere, eventually introducing the service in other cities across its 18-state service area of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas, before it gets around to wiring urban poor neighborhoods in Lincoln.

Cable industry defenders believe Time Warner Cable and Windstream are being treated differently by city officials. Hogan notes the cable company is required to serve the entire metropolitan area, unlike Windstream that critics contend may be interested only in cherry-picking the low-hanging fruit.

Windstream’s announcement leaves just two significant independent telephone companies without IPTV offerings: FairPoint and Frontier Communications.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KLKN Lincoln New television service in Lincoln 4-16-15.mp4[/flv]

KLKN in Lincoln covered the Windstream event introducing Kinetic TV to Lincoln and talked with company officials about what the new service offers Lincoln and how much it costs in comparison to Time Warner Cable, the area’s incumbent cable company. (2:29)

Charter Communications’ march to all-digital service is one big Excedrin headache for many of the communities enduring the cable company’s conversion.

Charter is embarked on a campaign to end analog cable television service, freeing up bandwidth to offer more HD channels and increase broadband speeds. But the switch to digital has been accompanied by frequent service disruptions and outages.

In Texas, customers complain their digital channels are often frozen or pixelated. In Casper, Wyo., where Charter acquired an older cable system from Cablevision that was originally built by Bresnan Communications, customers’ complaints range from inconsistent service and slow response times to loss of sound and frozen video during airing of City Council meetings.

But some of the loudest concerns about Charter originate from the Outer Banks of North Carolina where customers are finding the switch to digital can be very costly.

Tourism is a major part of the local economy and the Outer Banks are filled with seasonal homes, rental condos and hotels. Many property owners maintain seasonal accounts with Charter Cable, only active during the tourist season. Some hotel owners notified about Charter’s plans to transition towards digital service worked with the cable company to buy televisions that would not need additional equipment to work after the switch. With the cable company’s recommendations, some hotel chains purchased dozens or even hundreds of digital-ready television sets installed in rooms that were ready for the switch.

Only recently, Charter notified customers they also planned to encrypt the basic lineup, rendering the digital televisions useless without the additional cost and inconvenience of installing Charter’s digital set-top boxes. Although Charter will temporarily offer customers free rental of the boxes, after the offer expires, customers will pay Charter $6.99 a month for each box. For some upper end condos, the cost of renting multiple boxes will exceed the cost of the cable TV package.

The Outer Banks Voice details several other customer complaints:

With the older analog systems, many owners flat mounted their televisions to walls and had the cable wired directly into the television, out of sight. With boxes now required, rental homeowners will need to figure out where to place the box and how to run the cables to the set.

In addition, rental companies and homeowners will need to keep track of numerous remotes and keeping those remotes supplied with working batteries.

[…] Thus far, Charter is not offering boxes for sale, so owners cannot absorb the cost over the long-run use of the box, and there appears to be some confusion on whether homes with five or more televisions will require a “Pro Installation” at extra cost to ensure signal strength is sufficient.

If such an installation is required, owners and rental management companies will also be required to arrange access for Charter installers.

Rental condos are also faced with yet another logistic hurdle.

Many condos include cable television fees in their monthly association dues, and the cable contracts for all units are in the name of the condo association.

To obtain boxes, condo owners are now going to be required to set up their own individual accounts, often from an out-of-state location, and then determine how to get the boxes installed.

Signal strength is also a concern in condo projects. Even with analog signals, the multiple connections in one area make reception fuzzy and of low quality.

A small sample of complaints found all over Charter’s social media pages.

Charter Communications shared their side of the story about the digital conversion:

Outer Banks, N.C.

Charter customers are notified by newspaper, direct mail, bill messages, phone calls from Charter representatives, and Charter commercial spots beginning at least 30 days prior to their cutover. Charter is making it easy for customers to receive one or more digital boxes at no cost for one, two or five years, depending on the customer’s programming package and other qualifying factors.

Customers that need less than four boxes can have them shipped directly to their home by calling 1-888-GET-CHARTER or pick them up at a Charter Store.

Customers that live out of town, that own vacation homes, can authorize personnel with their property management company or other specified individuals to pick up their boxes. Customers must first authorize those individuals and add them to their account by calling 1-888-GET-CHARTER. The customer account owner can rescind authorization of individuals at any time.

Property Management companies or authorized individuals can then obtain up to five set-top boxes at a Charter Store.

Customers needing more than five boxes should contact Charter 1-888-GET-CHARTER. A professional technician will be scheduled to assist customers with the installation.

Charter Stores are currently operating with expanded hours to accommodate customers during this all-digital project. Charter Store hours will also be expanded in April where peak volume is expected.

Commercial properties have several options available and can work with their Charter Business account representative on the best solution for their business.

Due to advances in technology, solutions available may involve the need for additional equipment in order to provide the best possible cable, Internet and voice products for our customers.

Some Rogers Cable customers are being notified the cable company is slimming down their analog television lineup, requiring customers to get a digital adapter to continue watching networks in their new digital format.

We’re enhancing our cable TV network to deliver on our commitment to provide you with quality in television viewing, programming and entertainment content. The Rogers Cable Network Enhancement initiative involves upgrading current analog channels to digital channels in order to provide a superior TV experience on our Rogers cable TV network.

To maintain your cable service, you may need to install a digital adapter.

Rogers says the change is designed to improve the video and sound quality of cable channels, but in reality most cable operators are shifting away from analog television to free up bandwidth that can be repurposed for more HD television channels or faster broadband service.

“The Digital Adapter is being provided to you free of charge, you will not be charged for the digital adapter or incur any service fees associated with the hardware,” says Rogers. “The Digital Adapter is being provided to you to use while you subscribe to Rogers cable television services and remains our property. The Digital Adapter must be returned to us upon termination of your Rogers cable television service.”

However, do-it-yourself types who spliced Rogers’ cable wiring themselves to add additional cable TV outlets in the home will discover “a catch.” These extra, informal cable outlets are allowed by Rogers, but the cable company will not supply digital adapters for televisions attached to them unless the subscriber formally signs up for Rogers’ “extra outlets” add-on. That does not come cheap. Rogers charges $6.99 per month for up to four extra televisions. If customers don’t sign up, those televisions without digital adapters will lose more than a dozen analog TV channels during the first wave of digital conversion. If a customer has more than four televisions hooked up to Rogers Cable, there may be more fees.

The channels Rogers is converting to digital were not selected to minimize viewer disruptions.

While The Shopping Channel secures a safe new analog channel number in St. John’s, N.B., Turner Classic Movies gets hit with a digital switch. Little watched APTN – The Aboriginal People’s Television Network survives on analog, AMC and CNN do not in Moncton. Toronto subscribers will lose 19 channels to digital, including MTV, BNN, and The Comedy Network. Two home shopping networks get to stay in analog, however.

Set-top box-less Time Warner Cable subscribers in parts of New York City will find more than 90 percent of the basic cable lineup missing from their QAM-equipped televisions as the cable company completes a transition away from analog cable television and begins encrypting almost all its digital channels.

The Federal Communications Commission changed the rules last year allowing large cable operators to begin encrypting basic cable, requiring customers to rent cable boxes or CableCARD units to keep watching.

Time Warner Cable began the all-digital, encrypted channel conversion earlier this year in Mount Vernon, Staten Island and Bergen County, N.J., and is now switching on encryption in the New York City region on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.

The switch renders televisions useless for receiving cable channels without extra equipment supplied by Time Warner Cable. Encryption is deployed as an anti-theft measure, but it also inconveniences customers who have to rent equipment for each of their televisions. Encrypting basic channels also benefits Time Warner Cable by allowing service authorizations and disconnects to be handed from the office, reducing in-home appointments.

Customers will need a traditional set-top box, a Digital Transport Adapter (DTA), or a CableCARD to get the channels back. DTA boxes are being provided at no charge until 2015, after which they will cost $0.99 a month each.

Some customers also complain Time Warner is testing “copy protection” permissions, preventing some channels from being recorded. In Queens, one customer noted copy protection was active on C-SPAN, preventing recordings of the network. Some programmers may insist on copy protection technology being implemented as part of future cable carriage contracts. Most expect pay-per-view and on-demand events will be the first blocked from recording, potentially followed by premium movie channels.

At this time, Time Warner Cable says its encryption initiative is limited to the New York City area.

TiVo Roamio DVR

The newest entry in the should-be-more-competitive world of Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) might have gotten five stars from reviewers willing to play down the device’s asking price, but the biggest hurdle of all isn’t its cost, it is the complexity of getting it to work properly with your cable provider.

TiVo’s new Roamio was designed to declutter your viewing experience. It’s a DVR that can record shows you missed, an online video device that can stream content from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Spotify, Pandora and YouTube right on your television, and perhaps most powerful of all — it will soon stream it all to you on any mobile device located anywhere there is an Internet connection.

That puts TiVo’s Roamio well ahead of the behind-the-times set-top boxes and DVRs rented out by the cable company. Customers have clamored for a device that can properly record scheduled programs and allow those recordings to be viewed anywhere the customer wants to watch. Comcast’s box doesn’t work that way. Neither do boxes from Time Warner Cable, Cox, Bright House, and the rest.

Cue the lawyers.

The reason these common sense portability features are not available on the box you rent in perpetuity from the cable company is that programmers won’t allow it and many pay television providers don’t consider it a priority. Time Warner Cable only recently filed a patent to deliver customer-recorded content to portable devices. The patent application is an exercise to placate litigious programmers that cannot sleep nights knowing someone is offering a service they failed to monetize for themselves through licensing agreements. Feel the legal fees piling up:

“Because of the increasing popularity of home networking, there is a growing need for a strategy that enables a user to perform authorized transfer of protected content, e.g., transferring content from an STT [set-top terminal] to a second device in a home network, and at the same time prevents unauthorized distribution of the protected content,” Time Warner writes in its patent application.

While TiVo is selling a device that allows consumers to record programming for private viewing purposes, a cable operator with deep pockets that only rents DVRs cannot do likewise.

The Roamio comes in three versions, none of which are compatible with satellite television services:

• Roamio Pro ($600): Six tuners allow customers to record up to six shows at one time and has storage capacity for 450 hours of HD programming. Includes built-in Wi-Fi. Stream TV to mobile iOS devices coming soon (as is Android support);
• Roamio Plus ($400): Same as above except storage capacity is 150 hours of HD programming;
  Roamio ($200): Four tuner basic version omits built-in streaming to mobile devices but can record four shows at once and store 75 hours of HD programming. A good choice for cord-cutters as it includes an over-the-air broadcast television antenna input.
• All Roamio devices require TiVo service, which costs $15 a month or $500 for a lifetime subscription. All boxes support external hard drives with an eSATA interface to backup or store more recordings. All Roamio devices support 1080p and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

This Comcast DVR is only available for rent.

In contrast, cable operator-provided DVR service can often add $20 a month to your cable bill… forever. But is there real value for money paying TiVo $15 a month (or a $500 payment for the life of the device) for “service” on top of hardware that can cost up to $600?

TiVo thinks so: “Once you bring together all your favorite shows, movies and music into one place, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.”

Unfortunately, getting there is one heck of a battle according to Bloomberg’s Rich Jaroslovsky, who got his hands on a test unit that simply refused to get along well with Comcast.

“The cable industry is standing in the way,” Jaroslovsky writes.

That may not be surprising, considering the lucrative business of renting DVR equipment to customers eager for time-shifting and commercial-skipping. The cable company’s concept of DVR service includes a set-top box, decoder, and recording unit into one, relatively simple integrated device.

TiVo’s persistent monthly “service fee” as well as a steep purchase price made marketing the cable company’s “no-purchase-required” DVR easy, and the cable industry quickly won the lion’s share of the DVR business. Another strong argument in favor of the cable company’s DVR is the lack of a complicated set up procedure to get competing devices to reliably work with the cable company’s set-top box.

Motorola’s M CableCARD

Thanks to Comcast and other cable companies, setting up Roamio managed to confound even a tech reporter like Jaroslovsky, and Comcast was not much help.

The Roamio requires a CableCARD, a plug-in card-sized version of the cable company’s set-top box, to unlock digital cable channels.

The CableCARD was Congress’ attempt in the 1996 Telecom Act to give consumers an option to avoid costly and unsightly set-top boxes. Originally envisioned as a plug-in device that would offer “cable-ready” service without a set-top box in future generations of televisions, the CableCARD never really took off. The cable industry opposed the devices and dragged its feet, preferring to support its own set-top boxes. The CableCARD that eventually did emerge was initially often difficult to obtain and had huge limitations, such as one-way-only access which meant no electronic program guide, no video-on-demand, and no access to anything that required two-way communications between the card and the cable company. Newer CableCARDs do offer two-way communications and support today’s advanced cable services.

The only place most cable operators mention the availability of the CableCARD in detail is in a federally mandated disclosure of pricing, services, and a consumer’s rights and responsibilities — usually provided in a rice-paper-thin, tiny-print leaflet included with your bill once a year, if you still get one in the mail.

Roamio is likely to frighten technophobes right from the start with this important notification:

CableCARDs are made by one of four manufacturers: Motorola, Scientific Atlanta/Cisco, NDS, or Conax. You need one multi-stream CableCARD (M-card). Single-stream CableCARDs (S-cards) are not compatible.

“That costs an extra $1.50 a month from Comcast, and in my case, required three trips to its nearest office because the first card didn’t work,” Jaroslovsky writes.

On the second trip, Comcast handed him two cards in the hope at least one would work, requiring one last trip to return the card that didn’t.

Time Warner Cable and certain other cable operators use Switched Digital Video, incompatible with the Roamio without a Digital Tuning Adapter, available from the cable company.

The second hurdle was to get Comcast to recognize and authorize that CableCARD. Comcast’s technical customer support staff was lacking. Jaroslovsky found his call bounced from department to department attempting to authorize the card and diagnose why it simply refused to work at first.

After finally overcoming those problems, Jaroslovsky discovered he was out of luck getting Roamio to stream premium movie channels like HBO and Cinemax. The encryption system Comcast supports prohibits streaming the movie networks outside of the home. The Slingbox works around the issue by bypassing the encryption system’s permission settings with extra cables between it and your cable box.

Time Warner Cable subscribers will need still another piece of equipment — a Tuning Adapter compatible with Switched Digital Video (SDV). To conserve bandwidth, cable companies like Time Warner limit certain digital channels being sent to each neighborhood unless someone is actively watching.

Before you can view or record a program on an SDV channel, your box must be able to send channel requests back to the cable headend. Roamio is a one-way device and cannot send the required channel requests. Cable providers who have deployed SDV technology will provide a Tuning Adapter to customers who have HD TiVo boxes. A Tuning Adapter is a set top box that provides two-way capabilities, so your box can request SDV channels. There are two Tuning Adapter brands: Motorola and Cisco. Motorola CableCARDs work with Motorola Tuning Adapters. Scientific Atlanta and NDS CableCARD work with Cisco Tuning Adapters. Without the Tuning Adapter, a Roamio user will find error messages on several digital channels indicating they are “temporarily unavailable.”

Other cable operators offer varying support for Roamio. Cablevision has been learning how to support the device along with customers. Prior customer experiences make it clear front-line service representatives are not going to be very helpful managing the technical process to properly configure, update, and authorize CableCARD technology for the new TiVo device, so prepare to have your call transferred to one or more representatives.

After all this, Jaroslovsky was finally watching his Comcast cable channels, able to access on-demand services, and found TiVo’s interface and program guide more satisfying than the one offered on Comcast’s DVR.

Roamio Plus and Pro have built-in support for video streaming away from home that will be fully enabled this fall.

Jaroslovsky found in-home streaming smooth and satisfying. Programs launched quickly and looked terrific on an iPad with Apple’s high-resolution Retina display, with none of the blockiness or stuttering sometimes associated with streaming video.

His review unit allowed him to test streamed programming outside of the home and video quality on the go was much more variable. The current software prohibits video streaming on AT&T’s 4G LTE network, a problem with a resolution now in the works. Public Wi-Fi hotspots often delivered poor performance, even when they could supply up to 2Mbps. Blurred pictures and pixel blocks often broke up the video on slow Internet connections. A faster connection supporting more than 10Mbps is capable of delivering a better viewing experience, especially if that connection comes without usage caps.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TiVo Roamio DVR Demo Video 8-19-13.flv[/flv]

An introduction and demo of the TiVo Roamio DVR, produced by TiVo. (3 minutes)

This article was updated with a clarification about Tuning Adapters, required by some cable operators using Switched Digital Video. Thanks to reader Dave Hancock for helping clear things up.