Time Warner Cable has developed an app for Panasonic Viera TVs, making it the first operator to bring cable TV content to the platform. The app was being shown off in the Panasonic booth, along with other content providers.

For Time Warner Cable and other operators, TV apps are one way to provide more value to subscribers and to make more streaming content available than what they have in their traditional VOD libraries. And for consumer electronics manufacturers, these type of apps provide more content that their consumers can access on the devices.

Last year at CES, Time Warner Cable announced plans to build apps for Sony and Samsung broadband-connected TV sets. However, those apps have yet to materialize, it’s not clear when the Panasonic app — or Time Warner Cable apps for any other CE device — would make it into the market. TWC Director of Digital Communications Jeff Simmermon told me by email that the company would like to launch apps sometime this year across multiple platforms, but didn’t have any launch timing to share.

Time Warner Cable is just one of many cable operators looking to build connected TV apps. Samsung, for instance, was showing apps from Comcast, Verizon and DirecTV in its booth at CES. A representative said those apps would show up on its platform later this year.

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Warner Bros. has confirmed it will no longer be beholden to rights that would see its movies disappear from streaming sites while those titles are available on HBO and its HBO Go web and mobile applications. The closing of this so-called “HBO window” could go a long way toward making digital ownership of UltraViolet titles more appealing to consumers.

UltraViolet hopes to make digital ownership of movies more attractive, by allowing consumers to buy a title once and access it anywhere or on any device. One of the big questions revolving around the impending launch of UltraViolet streaming video services was whether or not studios would have to deal with the rights window, during which HBO has exclusive access to those titles online. Until recently, that meant movies purchased online couldn’t be accessed while HBO had pay TV rights to that content.

On a press briefing Monday afternoon ahead of the launch of the first UltraViolet-enabled title, Horrible Bosses, Warner Home Entertainment execs said that its movies won’t be subject to the HBO window. As a result, anyone who purchases a Warner Bros. DVD or Blu-ray disc won’t have to worry about losing access to the movie online or being blacked out once HBO gets ahold of it.

That doesn’t mean that HBO’s other studio partners — 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures — aren’t still subject to the same restrictions. Warner Bros. execs wouldn’t comment on where its competitors stood with regards to whether or not HBO had streaming exclusive rights to their movies when they enter the pay TV window. Of course, Warner Bros. and HBO are both part of media conglomerate Time Warner, so their interests are more likely aligned than HBO would be with other studios.

The news that HBO has restructured its deal to allow Warner customers to stream its movies whenever comes at the same time that it is making a big digital push of its own. The premium cable network is making all its movies and original TV series available online, on mobile devices and on connected TV platforms through its HBO Go initiative. Part of Time Warner’s broader TV Everywhere push, HBO Go gives users the ability to access on-demand content as long as they prove that they’re cable subscribers.

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Much of the discussion about Internet Service Providers centers around the nation’s largest players in the telecommunications and cable fields, but there are a number of smaller ISPs and it’s worthwhile to talk to them to discover how competition is faring in the U.S. and what might happen if more flourished. Royster Tucker, the COO of North State Communications, an ISP serving a 600-mile area in North Carolina highlighted the importance of fiber to the home, but also indicated that metered billing isn’t just for the big guys.

Fiber is the future, and North State is on board.

North State, which includes Greensboro in its service area, began deploying fiber to the home in 2009 because it was losing out to the cable companies with its DSL-only option. Tucker declined to tell me how many customers it currently has, but he says that it’s now the No. 1 provider of broadband in a region that includes Time Warner Cable and AT&T as well as smaller cable companies. “We said we want to be the broadband market leader and the way to do that late 2009 was with fiber to the home,” Tucker said.

Now North State offers an 80 Mbps down/30 Mbps up for consumers at a 12-month introductory price of a month, which is about what I pay for 12-13 Mbps down/ 2Mbps up cable broadband from Time Warner here in Austin. However, the most popular package North State sells is a 30/30 Mbps symmetrical package, although he did not disclose penetration or take rates. Tucker also noted that the company is still supporting its 10 Mbps DSL business in its service area, but he doesn’t plan on making more investments in the technology. “Back in 2003 and 2004 and 2006 we were out there shortening loop lengths, building out fiber to the node and all that, but now we’re going to stick with maintenance,” Tucker said.

To cap or not to cap? That is the question.

North State doesn’t currently have a broadband cap as Tucker believes the fiber network can withstand the speeds that today’s traffic requires. However, Tucker says, “We believe ultimately that is the direction the broadband market will go.” When pressed on the subject, Tucker says, “As over-the-top video becomes more and more prevalent and there’s more HD and bigger broadband requirements, the broadband market will move to some kind of cap or metered service.”

However he couldn’t explain precisely why this would need to happen. “The networks are expensive. We are providing bandwidth for all these wonderful things that are showing up on the Internet and that is costly,” he said. “This market is highly competitive and we have to get some money from somewhere to pay for these networks. All of it is not falling on the user.” But when asked if his financial models could support the delivery of more traffic he said that, “in a multi-product scenario, yes it does. We look at the whole household and the revenue we’re getting out of the households.”

When I asked if that meant North State could only recover costs and make money off a user that subscribed to multiple services, Tucker appeared to backtrack. A user that subscribed to broadband alone would suffice, he said. He then implied that part of the issue around capping was because some people use so much more than others. “All the rich content that’s showing up on the Internet is driving tremendous demand on our network, and we want our customers to have access to that.” He continued, “There are those that are more bandwidth-heavy users, and we need to strike a median on who’s paying for what, and that’s where we see that capping may come in.”

However, Tucker was very clear that North State wasn’t capping service now — and that it may never cap or meter service. However, one could hear the amazement in his voice when we discussed what people were doing over the network.

“I don’t think anyone could see what we would drag across these pipes, and people thought the unlimited model would be fine,” Tucker said. “But this is evolving and it’s something that we’re all having to deal with. We’re a broadband company and we want people to do what they want to do, and we want to deliver value to our shareholders.”

As people consume more bandwidth, it may well be smaller ISPs such as North State that are answering to private shareholders in highly competitive markets, that show us exactly what networks are capable of, both in terms of technology and in delivering profits.

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Earlier this week, Fox shocked many by announcing that it would introduce TV Everywhere–type authentication to broadcast content online that used to be available for free the day after a show aired on TV. We’ve written about the effect Fox’s decision will have on consumers, but what about its distribution partners? After all, they will be the ones working to actually implement the authentication scheme, and as a result they could end up paying a lot more to broadcasters.

Much of the rhetoric being bandied about so far seems to imply that Fox is acting in the interests of its cable and satellite distribution partners: By implementing TV Everywhere–type authentication for broadcast content online, it’s merely eliminating some of the friction that’s cropped up in its negotiation over retransmission fees. No one was happy that Fox was demanding more compensation for content that appeared on cable and satellite when, let’s face it, the network was essentially giving the same shows away for free on Fox.com and Hulu.

But adding authentication could also be a clever negotiating tactic as Fox seeks even higher fees from those distribution partners. Let’s say you’re Comcast, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV or any number of other major distributors that haven’t yet signed up for Fox’s mid-August launch of online authentication: Fox comes to you and says that it’s finally implemented a sign-in system that will ensure that only pay-TV or Hulu Plus subscribers will have access to its content the day after it airs online. But now that it has, it would like to get paid a little more in retrans fees, because, after all, it will be providing more value to your subscribers.

Do you pay up? Or do you risk disenfranchising your subscribers, who were once able to watch shows on Hulu the day after they’ve aired but can no longer do so because their cable provider isn’t a part of Fox’s exclusive next-day club?

This is all theoretical, of course, but Fox’s use of Hulu as a negotiating tool is not without precedent. It was Fox, after all, that blocked access to Hulu streams from Cablevision subscribers as part of its bitter dispute over retransmission fees last year. So using next-day access to online content as a way to extort even more retrans dollars wouldn’t be totally out of the question.

And Fox is unlikely to be the only broadcast network to do so. Once it has proven the model that authentication equals more retrans money, you can expect CBS, ABC and NBC to jump on board as well, using next-day access to Hulu and network sites as an incentive to rework their deals with pay-TV providers.

The big loser in all of this will be consumers. They will not only be used as pawns in the next round of retrans fights but as a result will also lose access to a service they’ve been accustomed to getting for free. And as broadcasters use access to online video as a way to squeeze ever-higher retrans fees from distributors, those costs will eventually get passed on to subscribers in the form of higher cable bills.

Fox and other broadcasters might justify the introduction of TV Everywhere–type logins as just extending the existing cable model online. But at the end of the day, it seems “authentication” is just a fancy word for charging users more.

Photo courtesy of (CC BY 2.0) Flickr user pasukaru76

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