Netflix announced a deal with three cable companies that will let U.S. subscribers watch the streaming video service as though it were an ordinary cable channel.
“We’re making Netflix a channel on our lineup and in our channel guides,” said David Isenberg, chief marketing officer for Atlantic Broadband. “If you’re an RCN customer, perhaps in the D.C. area you would pick up your remote control, you would tune to Channel 450, and there you’d find Netflix. You’d select it and that’ll launch the Netflix app. Literally, watching Netflix is as easy as changing the channel.”
You must be a subscriber of both Netflix and the supporting cable companies RCN, Grande Communications and Atlantic Broadband.
This deal Netflix has made is very different from the deal they made with Comcast. Netflix is paying Comcast for priority access to their customers here Netflix is offering a new way to watch the content.
“We currently have no plans to manage Netflix content differently on our network than any other Internet content,” Isenberg said.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Details are still limited to how exactly Netflix will implement the service and what restrictions it will have. We will be keeping a close eye on how this rolls out.