Does Comcast have the recipe for re-making television?

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: You know the flavor of CES is changing somewhat when one of the bigger announcements of the week comes not from a CE manufacturer per se, but from what a big chunk of the nation thinks of as their local cable company. Comcast's plan, as outlined Tuesday by CEO Brian Roberts, has the opportunity -- if not yet the likelihood -- of literally changing television, one-upping TiVo and converting the high-definition display into the biggest consumer of data in the world's wired telecommunications system.

But is this all just a science fiction story? With the US converting to digital broadcasting in just 13 months, and with perhaps fewer people knowing that's going to happen than know about Britney Spears' custody battles, we have to acknowledge the fact that in just a very short time, the whole direction of the television industry could become a "jump ball." So we asked Sharon Fisher, former Gartner analyst and our CES analyst this past week, to figure out whether Comcast could really pull this off. Sharon?

Sharon Fisher, BetaNews Senior CES Analyst: Scott, on Tuesday morning, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts reportedly demonstrated a 160 Mbps cable connection - compared to the 6 Mbps they have today -- downloaded a full-length high-definition movie in four minutes, and now everybody's predicting the immediate demise of Blockbusters.

Eek. Just come home, turn on the TV, no matter what time it is, set your TV set to show you the schedule of your choice from all of Comcast's providers, and watch in comfort.

At that rate, it might be faster to download a movie from Comcast than to get it booted up on the Blu-ray. But is it going to be that easy?

1. Comcast is limited. Limited and capped, in fact. Currently the company covers 27% of the US, and in December the FCC limited any one cable company to 30% of the US pay TV population - which currently means they can add just 3 million new subscribers.

2. How many of those 160 Mbps connections are they going to be able to make? How many people will have access to one in the first place?

3. Broadband Internet users know that the big difference between DSL and cable is that with DSL you get a certain amount of pipe that's all your own, while with cable you get a pipe -- which may be bigger -- that you have to share. How many people are going to be sharing one of those 160 Mbps pipes? Yes, when you're the CEO of Comcast you can download a movie in four minutes, but how about when you're J. Random User trying to download the latest hot movie, along with a couple hundred of your neighbors?

4. Roberts promised there'd be 3,000 movies available by the end of 2009. Goll-ee. In comparison, Blockbuster Online has 75,000 movies and Netflix has 90,000. If you want to watch first-run films, you're probably all set, but what if your tastes run elsewhere? Just as a data point, note that the big HD movie Comcast is promoting now is...Norbit.

5. How much is all this going to cost? 3G service from Comcast costs $100 a month now, minimum. If a 160 Mbps pipe is 25 times as big as a 6 Mbps pipe, will the service cost 25 times as much?

6. The irony of the Comcast CEO trumpeting his service's ability to download movies should not be lost on the dozens of subscribers who have filed complaints with the FCC claiming that Comcast is throttling them, either by service (such as because they were using BitTorrent) or by data (Comcast won't say how much, but if you use your network "too much" you get warned and then turned off). The very day Roberts was doing his demonstration, in fact, the FCC said it was investigating the complaint. So if you pay for the service, are you actually going to be able to download movies "on demand," or will it be set to some arbitrary limit?

7. So.when I download the movie, where does it go? Can I save it, or just watch it? Even if I just watch it, how big is an HD movie, anyway? Back of the envelope, if it takes four minutes to download a movie at 160 Mbps, that's about 5 gigabytes. That's going to add up a lot faster than the Tivo. Do I need to re-download it every time I want to watch it?

8. And speaking of that, how much disk space is Comcast going to need to store all those movies? At 5 gigabytes a movie, it'll be 15 terabytes just for the paltry 3,000 movies he promises by the end of 2009, assuming there's only one copy of each.

I have an idea. When the service comes out, let's have everyone on the network simultaneously download Lawrence of Arabia, and bring Comcast to its knees.

Scott Fulton: Maybe that's an idea we could pitch to Gizmodo. Thanks, Sharon.