Variety

Comcast continues to paint Netflix as a competitor, as the cable giant keeps trying to make the case that it needs to swallow Time Warner Cable to have a presence on a national scale -- and compete with what it portrays as surging digital-video rivals.

Comcast Chairman-CEO Brian Roberts said that with the TW Cable acquisition and subsequent spinoff of systems to Charter Communications, Comcast will add a net 7 million customers. That would give Comcast about 30 million video subscribers -- and Roberts noted that Netflix now has more than 35 million US subscribers. The merger will give “the industry a better opportunity to have a footprint regionally and hopefully nationally,” Roberts said.

In reality, Comcast and Netflix aren’t really directly competitive: They offer different kinds of content, and Netflix is not a replacement for the broad programming available on pay TV. Comcast does offer a Netflix-like streaming service, Streampix, but that’s bundled with TV and has a much smaller content lineup. In addition, Comcast’s video biz is far larger in dollar terms. Comcast posted $5.18 billion in video revenue for the first quarter of 2014, whereas Netflix generated $1.27 billion.

[Commentary] Here’s what Viacom’s lawsuit actually did: It spurred YouTube to accelerate the development of tools to detect -- and pull down -- copyrighted material, in an automated way.

Given that YouTube users upload 100 hours of video every minute, Viacom (and others) complained that it was not feasible to monitor that volume manually and send out DMCA takedown requests one at a time.

It was only during the Viacom court proceedings that YouTube announced it would filter content for all copyright holders, not just its business partners. No doubt, YouTube would have evolved its practices to a more content-owner-friendly system -- eventually. But the lawsuit prompted it to move more quickly than it would have otherwise, and also served notice to other user-generated content sites that Viacom was prepared to take aggressive legal action.

Comcast customers can now buy access to “House of Cards” season 1 through their cable set-top box and watch it across multiple devices -- no Netflix subscription required.

The cable giant struck a pact with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, giving Comcast rights to sell the Emmy-winning first season of “House of Cards” through the recently launched Xfinity Store service. Netflix currently owns exclusive streaming rights to the Media Rights Capital-produced series, while Sony handles international and home video distribution.

In addition, Comcast will add select Sony titles to its early electronic sell-through service, which offers access ahead of the traditional video-on-demand-rental window.

[March 10]