We first reported back in May that Comcast was working with Samsung and Ucentric on a combination cable box/digital video recorder. Those still haven’t been introduced nationwide, but apparently in a few markets Comcast is enhancing its On Demand service, which previously offered just movies, with the ability to watch — on demand — TV shows that aired in the previous 24 hours. Programs on the major broadcast networks aren’t included, but if they could get the networks to play along and if they could expand the selection to include, say, the past week or two of programming, most people wouldn’t see the need for a big box with a hard drive in their living room when they could just get whatever they wanted from Comcast’s central server. Well, there might be one reason why you’d still want a TiVo: the article doesn’t say whether or not Comcast’s service will let you fast-forward through commercials or not.
