The country's largest cable television provider is taking on Netflix
Comcast's
How long will it take to build a catalog as vast as Netflix's streaming service?
It's a fair question, but the one thing holding Streampix back is the same stipulation that has been keeping DISH Network's
In other words, instead of giving picky TV buffs a compelling value proposition, Comcast is just making its service more expensive.
Comcast has a problem. It's running out of people to gouge. The monthly average total revenue per video customer has increased 7% to $141.24 over the past year. The bundling of its three core services into a single pricy package may seem like good business, but every recent quarter finds more Comcastic defections than additions.
Investors cheered last week when Comcast revealed that it only shed 17,000 net video customers during the final three months of 2011, but there's little reason to believe that the cable giant's 22.3 million subscribers won't continue to shrink. Comcast has lost 460,000 video customers over the past year and more than 1.2 million over the past two years.
Even if Streampix matches the entire digital library that Netflix offers for $7.99 a month, it's still not going to unseat the streaming champ. Paying $141.24 to save $3 a month is a bad bet. More to the point, Netflix is available to every home in 47 different countries. Streampix is limited to the 22.3 million homes -- and shrinking -- on Comcast.
Streampix is a bigger threat to Time Warner's
There will be some Netflix subscribers on Comcast who decide that Streampix is the better fit. This isn't a battle for Netflix to win as much as it is a war to keep defections in check.
However, Streampix isn't a Netflix killer. How can it be, if Comcast is already bleeding slowly?
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