Late last week it was reported that Comcast had walked away from talks with Apple and had decided not to support the Apple TV. Today Comcast publicly denied these reports saying “BestAppleTV ran a story last week that contains numerous inaccuracies and wrongly conflates individual business dealings and relationships from Sky, NBCUniversal and Comcast Cable.”
Here is the statement from Comcast:
BestAppleTV ran a story last week that contains numerous inaccuracies and wrongly conflates individual business dealings and relationships from Sky, NBCUniversal and Comcast Cable. To be clear, Comcast Cable is deeply invested in development and innovation of its flagship whole-home platform, Xfinity X1, that is changing the way millions of people watch TV and manage the connected home. While more than two-thirds of our Xfinity TV customers have X1 today, we also provide our customers choice and flexibility in accessing their video subscription on their owned devices. Xfinity TV customers can currently access their subscription via the Xfinity Stream app on iOS and Android mobile devices, and on computers and laptops via the Xfinity Stream web portal. Customers can also access their subscription on the TV via the Xfinity Stream app for Roku devices and Samsung smart TVs (and soon LG and Sony smart TVs as well), or use their Xfinity credentials to authenticate more than 130 networks across more than 20 devices including Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast, and Xbox One, among others, or via CableCARD devices like TiVo. And Comcast Cable is actively in talks with other device manufacturers to distribute the Xfinity Stream app, under terms that are mutually agreeable, through the Xfinity TV Partner Program, which continues to enable us to efficiently and effectively expand the range of devices our customers can utilize to access their Xfinity TV subscription.
According to the report, Comcast was planning to port over a streaming service they recently purchased in the UK called NOW TV. Well Now TV already has an Apple TV app but the report said Comcast told Apple they would not be offering an Apple TV app in the US for their new streaming services.
At the time Cord Cutters News said: “It would be a very strange move for Comcast to base their new streaming service on the NOW TV tech, but not want to use the already existing Apple TV app.” Now it seems like Comcast is still in talks with Apple to add Apple TV support to their new streaming service.
Now this statement from Comcast does not mean an Apple TV app will launch when their new streaming service does. It is possible that Apple and Comcast fail to come to a deal but as of today, Comcast is still in talks with Apple.
Cord Cutters News will follow this story and post updates as we learn more.
Update: BestAppleTV.com sent Cord Cutters News the following statement:
The Comcast statement does not address or refute the specific claims of the current Apple relationship in our story. While painting a positive picture of what it’s doing to provide customer choice, it doesn’t directly address any issues related to Apple, Apple TV, or tvOS.
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