COMCAST TO SELL MOVIES VIA CABLE RECEIVERS

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator and the controlling shareholder of NBCUniversal, plans to begin selling films and TV shows to consumers through its cable receivers, the Wall Street Journal reported today (Friday), citing people with knowledge of the plans. Customers will have the option of buying as well as renting movies via Comcast’s video-on-demand platform, many of them two weeks before they become available on disc, the Journal said. Until now, buying digital versions of movies has been regarded by many in the industry as too complex, requiring a settop box or a computer; the Comcast strategy will allow the movies to be purchased directly through cable boxes and stored in the cloud, where they can be accessed at any time via a customer’s TV set, computer, or mobile device.