Why would you change one of the best-known brand names in America today? “This is about our product,” Comcast spokesperson Jennifer Khoury said in a statement. “It is about providing our customers with products that just keep getting better.”

I suspect that most Comcast customers don’t care whether the service is called Comcast or Xfinity or Irving. When I lived in the suburbs of Boston, the cable provider started out as Continental Cablevision, renamed itself MediaOne, and then was bought by and renamed after AT&T. Today, it’s Comcast–but Boston is one of the first eleven Xfinity areas, so it’ll change again next week. That’s five different names in fourteen years, and I don’t think any of the switches did a thing other than to provide work for branding consultants and signmakers.

(Of course, I still instinctively refer to the stadium where the San Francisco Giants play as “PacBell park,” and have been known to correct myself to to “SBC” before settling on the correct “AT&T.”)

The obvious temptation is to accuse Comcast of shedding its venerable name because consumers hold it in low regard. Could be. The company has historically fared poorly in satisfaction surveys (although it’s done a bit better recently). I’m not a Comcast hater on principle: The Internet service I have from it now is the best broadband I’ve ever had, and I’m impressed by its @comcastcares customer service on Twitter. But the user interface on the Comcast TV box I had was freakishly horrible to the point that it interfered with my ability to watch TV rather than aided it. (If I hadn’t swapped the box out for a TiVo, I swear I would have ended up flinging it through my living-room window in a fit of rage.) And my local Comcast office has a bit of a Department of Motor Vehicles feel to it, with long lines and a threadbare aesthetic.

In short, Comcast still feels like it’s operating under the misimpression that it’s a monopoly. Which it isn’t, thank heavens–even if it’s the only cable game in town in many places, it’s perfectly possible to be a happy, well-entertained, reasonably-informed person without ever turning a dollar over to it.

If the Xfinity name signals a new attitude towards customer satisfaction, swell. Me, I kind of wish that the dollars Comcast will pour into the rebranding effort had been spent on upgrades to set-top boxes, remote controls, and customer service–the stuff that means far more than the name on the bill. Maybe I’ll start calling it “Continental Cablevision” again until I see real improvement.

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Reason (A) still strikes me as a significant argument in favor of keeping cable. With reason (B), however, I may be at a crossroads. My TiVo HD, which never worked very well, now isn’t working at all–it crashes every few minutes. I’m still trying to troubleshoot it, but I suspect that the drive is bad and will need to be replaced. That’ll require an investment of money and time, and while I may go through with it, I’m also flirting with the notion of retiring the TiVo and giving up cable.

News remains the biggest argument against doing so: I still like the idea of having CNN, CSPAN, Fox News, MSNBC, and other newsy outlets readily available. On the other hand, some of this stuff is available in podcast form–albeit after a delay–and it’s not like I’m glued to TV news every night. (I do, however, like to gorge on it when breaking events warrant, whether they involve election night or a celebrity death or the moving tale of a small boy swept away in his father’s experimental balloon.)

If I cut the cable and give up TiVo, what should I replace them with? I’m still not sure. I like Roku. I own an Apple TV that I don’t use much but would probably enjoy if I made an effort to rediscover it. The Boxee Box looks promising.

But the one box that offers access to the widest variety of stuff–including an endless supply of free material–is a PC. So I’m also toying with the notion of connecting a Windows box or Mac Mini to my Vizio and using it for Netflix, Boxee, YouTube, video podcasts, and a whole lot more. The major downside: Even a cheap PC costs a lot more than a Roku or a Boxee Box. But hey, if I’m no longer tithing to Comcast I’ll have some newfound cash to spend.

I don’t need to give up cable. I can afford it, and there are times that I’m very glad I have it. But more and more, I feel guilty about spending as much I do each month given how little of it I end up watching. It feels wasteful, like filling up your plate at an all-you-can-eat buffet when you know you’re only going to take a bite or two.

Here’s the part where I ask for your advice. What would you do? What are you doing?

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Dave broke the news back in August that Comcast would be coming out with a new remote DVR scheduling feature in the near future. Since then, I’ve kept an eye on the myDVR page in hopes I’d get a heads-up on regional availability. Today, after reading about guide updates over on the Comcast blog, I revisited the bookmarked URL and hit the jackpot. I can now manage all of my DVR recordings online. It appears that I’m in one of the early market rollouts, but the rest of Comcast’s digital subscribers with a Motorola set-top should get the upgrade over the next several months.

In addition to letting me manage recordings, the new myDVR Manager site includes decent search functionality with content filters (HD, sports, movies, etc.) and keyword results that incorporate both live broadcasts and on-demand offerings. The UI is easy to use and even anticipates what I might need next. A search on Duke, for example, let me quickly isolate just the Duke college basketball games.

The series recording options are also much easier to manage than they are on the traditional guide. See further pics after the jump for a look at menus and options.

(This post is republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

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I still go back and forth on the idea of getting rid of cable for Internet-only TV, but Fancast Xfinity could be an argument for continuing to tithe  to Comcast.

All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka has more details. I’ll check it out as soon as I’m at a PC for a bit of time (and can remember my Comcast e-mail address, which the company assigned to me when I subscribed, which I never use, and which is required to log in…).

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Sooner or later, we’re all going to get all of our entertainment and information over the Internet, whether it’s from Apple or Comcast or someone else or a combination of multiple options. I’m not sure how it’ll all pan out, or how long it’ll take. But I do know what I’d like to see in such a service. Stuff like this:

A la carte options. I don’t watch 98 percent of the channels included in my cable package, and never will–and the only reason I’m paying for the tier of service I’m getting is to get one or two stations that interest me. I’d much rather be able to select from a handful of stations I know I’ll watch. Better yet, why can’t I pay for individual programs?

Diversity even cable can’t offer. I want niche programming on topics I’m interested in. I want every movie that’s extant, and every episode of every TV show–including ones that never came out on DVD.

One subscription I can watch anywhere and everywhere. I’d like to pay one flat fee for programming I can watch on my TV, my PC, and my phone. (That’s one reason why the idea of an iTunes-based subscription service is intriguing–I’ve already got iTunes on my computers, on my iPhone, and–courtesy of Apple TV–on my TV.)

Both live streams and a great DVR in the cloud. One of the reasons I still pay Comcast each month is because it’s still the best way to get news and other real-time programming. I wouldn’t pay an additional $30 a month for Subscription iTunes unless it brought me MSNBC and CNN and FOX and CSPAN. (Or, alternatively, unless they all become available online for free through some other means.) But I also want to be able to get anything my subscription qualifies me to watch at any time.

Is any of this too much to ask for? I’d cheerfully pay a lot more than $30 a month to the first company who offers it.  And until it comes along, I’ll muddle along with a combination of Comcast, iTunes, Roku, Amazon on Demand, Slingbox, Netflix Watch Instantly, podcasts, various network-specific sites, and old VHS tapes. Between them, I figure they get me about two-thirds of the way to where I’d like to go…

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According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Comcast has struck deals with about two dozen cable and movie channels to provide content. There is some bad news here though. You won’t gain access to the entire lineup of online content — only what is included in your package.

Either way, the move signals an effort by the entertainment industry to get a leg up on illicit distribution of programming. By offering the programming itself, and on-demand, the urge to run for BitTorrent and the like may be lessened for some.

Take the music industry for example. It decided to resist the digital movement, and ended up getting burnt badly. Only now is the industry beginning to gain some foothold in the digital world.

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I can’t remember if I’ve told this story on Technologizer before, but I recently decided that the time was right for me to get rid of my landline and go with my cell phone full time (supplemented from time to time by Skype). After all, weeks go by when I don’t use my Comcast landline at all, and most of my incoming calls are wrong numbers or debt collectors looking for someone who apparently had the number before me. (I don’t ever give it out–in part because I can’t remember it.)

But when I called Comcast to cancel, the rep had news for me: The “triple play” bundle I subscribed to was such a fabulous deal that canceling the phone portion would…increase my monthly bill by four bucks. I’m still figuring out exactly how to respond to that, but for the moment I remain a landline subscriber and am trying to use it more to keep my AT&T minutes under control.

Anyhow, this is all leading up to a T-Poll (I did a similar one a few months ago, but I think things are shifting so rapidly that the results might be different this time):

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Comcast currently controls about 25 percent of the cable market, with about 23.7 million customers. With the law now vacated, the company will have an easier time looking for potential acquisitions to expand its reach.

The rule has an interesting history: it was first implemented in 1992 as part of an effort to control monopolization of the cable industry. The court declared the law unconstitutional in 2001, and had it set aside. That didn’t stop the FCC: in 2007, on a 3-2 vote it re-instituted the policy.

Analysts say that its unlikely that Comcast will acquire large cable operators, as there is not a significant enough benefit to doing so. However, with no roadblocks, the nation’s largest cable operator is pretty much free to get as big as it wants.

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The main functionality of this application splits into three parts. The first is an email application that will allow the user to check his or her email. But it functions more than just an email inbox. The users phone voicemail also uses this setup, although you can either select to view those in a different tab or mixed in with your regular mail.

I’m sure most of us will opt for the separate tab: with the amount of junk mail these days, your voicemails will likely just get lost in the mix. Nice feature here is Comcast’s use of iPhone 3.0 functionality — meaning you’ll be able to type in landscape mode just like you could do in the standard Mail app.

More than just voicemail — users will be able to view their received/missed calls from the application. If you so choose, you may click on the number to call or text the caller back from the iPhone.

If you have a Comcast Address Book, you will be able to sync the data there with the standard iPhone Address Book. This is a nice feature — and could be useful to those who may not have MobileMe but would still like that syncing functionality nevertheless.

Other functions include a Guide app, which will tell you what’s on television right now, and an “On Demand” feature which allows you to watch movie trailers of upcoming programming on the service.

However, what’s missing here, and what makes the app less than fantastic — err, Comcastic rather — is the lack of DVR control. PC Magazine’s Sean Ludwig points this out and i tend to agree. If it had this, I’d consider it one of the iPhone’s killer apps.

Alas, there may be some kind of technical hurdles to getting this done, but I think it definitely should be a priority in a future release.

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If I stick around with Comcast, I might as well enjoy it–and I’m guardedly optimistic about On Demand Online, the Web-based service which the company is cooking up. It’s signed up a respectable list of content providers: Time Warner, A&E, Starz, and others–and, most recently, CBS. They’ll provide programming for a Hulu-like site that’s supposed to start testing this month.

Unlike the free, ad-supported Hulu, Comcast’s service is apparently going to be available to paying Comcast subscribers only. I hope that means it’ll be ad-free and have access to some shows that Hulu can’t get–in other words, that it’ll be a true Web-based version of Comcast’s On Demand video-on-demand service. (Which, incidentally, I can’t get–it’s not compatible with my TiVo HD box.)

I persist in being perfectly willing to consider paying for content on the Web when opportunities arise–in part because vast amounts of content are simply going to disappear unless the people who own them figure out how to convince consumers to pay up. So even though I continue to flirt with the idea of canceling Comcast and subsisting on a diet of Hulu and iTunes, I’m actually rooting for On Demand Online to be really good. So good, in fact, that I stop talking about kissing Comcast goodbye.

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