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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Comcast app turns iPad into remote control

Bob Fernandez Philadelphia Inquirer

It’s the newspaper TV grid on electronic steroids.

Comcast Corp. said Monday that it was releasing immediately for its cable-TV subscribers an app for Apple’s fast-selling iPad that lists 1,000 channels vertically and two weeks of programs horizontally. Those channels and days can be scrolled by finger touch on the iPad tablet – similar to scrolling through songs on Apple’s iPod.

While functioning as a channel guide, the “Xfinity TV App” also serves as a channel-changer remote in an elegant use of the iPad, wireless technology, the Internet, a cable switching station, and the Comcast digital set-top box.

That means customers can change their TV channel with the iPad – and they don’t even have to point it at the set-top box. The signal is caught in a home’s WiFi system and routed to the Comcast network that does the channel change.

The cable giant expects to add enhancements so an iPad can be used to watch streamed TV shows and movies. Those enhancements could be released in December.

The app is available for free to Comcast digital subscribers from the iTunes store and can be downloaded to Apple’s iPhones.