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Miss The Opening Scene? Don't Fret

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By RICHARD MULLINS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 12, 2007

TAMPA - Ever tune into a great TV show midstream and wished you could rewind it to see the program from the beginning?

Soon you could do just that. The Tampa Bay area's dominant cable TV provider, Bright House Networks, announced plans Thursday to launch a feature called 'Start Over' by November.

The free feature is a first for the area, and will allow subscribers to tune into a show at, say, 5:28 p.m., but restart the program from where it began at 5 p.m., all without using a digital video recorder.

The new feature, expected to launch Oct. 24, will work with about 40 popular channels initially, including Nickelodeon and Animal Planet, but expand to about 100 next year, Bright House officials said.

Customers won't be able to do a few things they've come to love about modern cable TV. The system won't permit viewers to skip through commercials, or fast forward a program they've restarted, like a DVR service. But Bright House officials say this restart system is just the first in a series of advances in digital media that will let customers watch TV when and how they want.

Next year, Bright House hopes to expand the Start Over system to include shows that ran anytime during the previous 24-hour period. For example, someone getting home at 7 p.m. could zip back in time and watch any show that occurred during the day, even if they didn't pre-program a digital video recorder.

'We feel this gives the customer a real benefit when they're channel surfing,' said Michael Robertson, senior vice president of Western operations at Bright House Networks.

It does not require a DVR because it works similar to pay-per-view movies - with shows sent in a stream directly from computer servers at Bright House to a customer's cable TV box.

More Channels To Come In Time

When customers flip through channels and land on a show in progress, a small pop-up box will appear asking if they want to start the program again. Customers can then click the 'select' button on their existing remote control to replay it from the beginning, plus pause and restart as they wish.

About 60 percent of Bright House customers have digital cable and could use the system, Robertson said. More channels will work with the Start Over system over time, he said, with 60 likely by the end of the year and 100 through 2008.

The current lineup of channels that work with the system includes channels such as Cartoon Network, CNN, Fox News, TNT and Bay News 9.

'I think they'll receive pretty solid reception from those consumers who don't already have DVRs,' said Phil Leigh, president of Tampa-based Inside Digital Media.

Get Used To Watching Commercials

Compared to a typical DVR system, there are some drawbacks, he notes.

The system won't allow customers to skip over commercials during playback. That benefits the advertising revenue of both Bright House and the cable content provider, Leigh said.

A show can only be restarted during its original time slot, so if a program runs from 5 to 6 p.m., customers can only restart the show up to 5:59.

Customers also can't record a restarted show to their DVR system - so if they come in midway through a Buccaneers game, they can't store the whole game to view later.

The Start Over system also does not work with high-definition channels, Robertson said.

Officials with Verizon's FiOS - Bright House's main cable TV rival in the Tampa Bay area - say they have no plans to offer a feature like Start Over. Instead, they plan to focus on new interactive features such as on-screen mini-programs called 'widgets,' which can show current weather, and their Home Media DVR that collects video, photos and music into one system from across the Internet.

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com.

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