"Right now it's pretty hard to get Internet stuff on your
TV," Britt said at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions
Conference in New York.
"We're actually going to have equipment we make available
to subscribers," he said. "It's actually going to be a new
wireless cable modem that will allow you to network everything
in your house."
Britt gave few specific details on how the service would
work or when it would be available.
"Within a relatively short time ... it's going to be very
easy to get Internet TV on your big screen TV," he said,
estimating it would take between one to two years to popularize
such technology already sold by the likes of Apple Inc.
Apple TV lets users take a movie downloaded to their
personal computer and watch it on their television screen.
TiVo Inc lets many of its subscribers select Web video from
providers such as The Onion, the New York Times and CNET
Networks. The video is downloaded from the Internet to a TiVo
set-top box for viewing later.
But web-to-TV technology is still in its early days, due in
part to the complexity of making web video look good on higher
resolution TVs.
Consumers may also be hesitant to navigate the thousands of
web sites that offer unique video, and to buy more equipment in
addition to paying monthly cable or satellite fees.
Major cable operators have had success spreading such
technologies among their large pool of subscribers, including
the digital video recording technology that originally made
TiVo famous.
Shares in Time Warner Cable, which recently announced plans
to separate fully from Time Warner Inc by the end of the year,
rose 2 percent to $30.57.
(Reporting by Michele Gershberg; Editing by Derek Caney)
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