It’s on: Time Warner Cable alleges that Netflix discriminates against its customers

Time Warner Cable upped the ante in the dicey relationship between Netflix and some of the country’s largest Internet service providers, alleging that the video subscription service discriminates against Time Warner Cable customers.

“Netflix is… closing off access to some of its content while seeking unprecedented preferential treatment from ISPs.” The point of contention is Netflix’s recent launch of 3D and Super HD video formats. Netflix launched a limited number of 3D titles during CES last week, and also added the ability to stream many of its titles in Super HD — a better-looking 1080p HD format that features less compression, and thus higher bandwidth requirements, that Netflix’s regular 1080p streams. Both 3D and Super HD are exclusively available to subscribers whose ISPs take part in Neftlix’s Open Connect CDN network, and the company is actively encouraging its subscribers to contact their ISPs and get them to adopt Open Connect. This kind of customer-driven campaign apparently didn’t go over so well with Time Warner Cable.