Comcast Roundup: ‘Major’ challenges with TV Everywhere persist, no baseball for elderly and More

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.
We’re not quite done with this topic yet.
For two consecutive weeks, the biggest Comcast story has remained the same — it’s partnership with Time Warner to launch an online TV video streaming service that requires cable subscription authentication.
Major challenges remain in designing that authentication system, reports the Los Angeles Times. While broadcast networks like NBC have been quick to put their content online for free, cable providers, like Comcast, are eager to create a source of revenue online.
The L.A. Times also reports that the initiative, dubbed TV Everywhere, is proposed to include regular commercials, like broadcast TV, despite the trend online for fewer, shorter video advertisements. (Watch the CEOs of Comcast and Time Warner speak on the proposal after the jump.)
If you’re thinking of the online TV limit, think 500 hours, as Multichannel News reports. Web video watched through TV Everywhere will count toward the overall 250-gigabyte per month usage limit, which Comcast instituted last fall.
“According to my calculations, 250 Gbytes is enough for some 496 hours of high-quality video streaming, or the equivalent of 20 days of around-the-clock online-video watching,” wrote Todd Spangler.
While some executives have brushed the concern aside, the question of antitrust implications for the Comcast and Time Warner Internet-video collusion is real, Gigaom reports.
After the jump, keeping baseball from a 94-year-old fan, Comcast and Time Warner heads speak, and four other Comcast stories for the faithful.
In order of importance for your ease:

• Inquirer columnist Danny Rubin finds and reports on 94-year-old Jessie Foyle, a Phillies fan to the extreme who struggles to listen to the baseball team’s games on a transistor radio because her retirement home has DirecTV. Comcast owns rights to most of the Phillies games and, Rubin suggests, they ain’t sharing.
• Comcast became the first major cable TV company to release wireless broadband beyond of Wi-Fi hotspots when it launched the service in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday. Services in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and others are planned to follow by the end of 2009. This follows the company’s November 2008 investment in Clearwire.
• The Inqy’s Bob Fernandez profiles the work of Comcast Interactive Media, the company’s 800-employee Internet division. It includes ping pong and the department’s relationship to its cable TV operations.
• TV Squad suggests that a Comcast advertisement attacking Verizon’s FiOS TV has been changed.
• A press release announcing that Comcast is now the third largest residential phone services provider.
• Comcast Voices has a video interview with Brian Roberts and Jeff Bewkes, CEOs of Comcast and Time Warner respectively, about their company’s partnership on TV Everywhere, as announced last week.

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