To say nothing of evermore curatable content options, the act of TV watching itself is becoming a precision-point personalized experience. While some type-A viewers are slaves to the DVR, others like to graze across the vast on-demand buffet at their leisure. Then there are those outliers who still watch live television at the time it actually airs. What’s a cable provider that hopes to please everyone to do?
In Cox Communications’ case the solution is to, well, please everyone. The nation’s third-largest cable company recently launched Contour, a new second-screen app merging all of the above into a “Personal Video Experience” that, as a recent promo for the service explains, “conforms to me.”
Contour aggregates live TV, on demand and a Cisco-developed DVR that is the only one in the country capable of recording up to six shows at once. Contour users can watch Cox content on the iPad anywhere in the house, and a button in the corner makes for easy transferal to the big screen. The app also takes a clear shot at Netflix with a recommendation feature that provides personal picks for as many as eight users per household. Got six kids and a spouse? Netflix only provides personalized recommendations for five of that brood.
While the goals of the Contour app are lofty, it is currently not without its limitations. As reported by The Courant, it offers 90 cable networks but none of the major broadcast or regional sports networks due to ongoing carriage fee disagreements. The amazing six-tuner DVR and push-to-big-screen feature are only available via an upgrade to Cox’s new Cisco set-top box, which costs $14.99 per month in addition to the $10 per month fee for Contour’s service. Anyone with a Motorola box can’t use those features at all, though Contour does add on-demand content for those users and is a more powerful tool than the older Cox TV Connect streaming/DVR app currently available for Motorola.
Still, such kinks seem reparable and in combining every kind of viewing experience under one mobile roof, Cox seems to be keeping pace with a nation of cord cutters who want their content flexibly, easily, endlessly and immediately.
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