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Cox Communications will be dipping its toes into the TV Everywhere waters when it launches a Web-based service to PCs that features two channels in June.
“We don’t have a brand name for it,” Cox spokesman David Grabert said this morning. “I don’t think we’re going to develop a name for it like our MyPrimetime service. For us, our whole viewpoint is that we’re going to give customers access anytime, on any screen, so we’re moving along with that.”
While the service streams the content to PCs, Grabert said the details of how the users are authenticated would be announced later. Last year, Rogers launched a TV Everywhere-type service from a Web portal that authenticated users through their cable modems.
Last week, Cox announced that Epix, which is a movie channel jointly owned by Viacom Inc., Lionsgate Entertainment Corp. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., and Vutopia would be available online for free to Cox customers who subscriber to its digital “Movie Pak” tier.
Epix, which has rights to Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate movies, first cut a deal with Verizon last year, but Cox became its first announced cable operator customer in January. Vutopia is a new movie service that is currently available in Cox’s VOD library. The two channels are now available in all of Cox’s systems.
Grabert said Cox’s first foray into a TV Everywhere-type service was the Winter Olympics in partnership with NBC Universal.
“You could consider [the June launch] to be evolutionary with other content to be announced once we negotiate those deals,” Grabert said.


