Fancast XFinity TV: I'm paying $120 for this?

Comcast's long awaited over-the-top video service has finally launched and the results are in.



The service (shown above) is grainy, jerky and essentially unwatchable. Much of this is due to Comcast's decision to take Hulu content (which was originally encoded at 640 x 360 resolution) and display it at 915 x 515 resolution. By forcing the site to move around 143% more pixels than actually exist the geniuses at Comcast have crippled the site's ability to deliver smooth video.

What's truly maddening is that the exact same content can be found over at Hulu, in the "correct" resolution, and it looks great:



One could go on and on about how bad the Fancast UI is, or how the experience will damage people's impression of online video. But isn't that kind of the point? Comcast wishes this whole online video thing would just go away (leaving them to happily collect $120 a month for something that Netflix and Apple want to sell for about $8). With Fancast XFinity TV they might actually make their wish come true.